Content:
Notes, approximately forty words, toward a poem of "celebration of the
superiority of the night," perhaps related to the poem eventally titled
"Night on the
Prairies," first published in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
as No. 15
in the "Leaves of
Grass" cluster. This manuscript has been pasted down to a
backing sheet and the verso is inaccessible.
Content:
Whitman cut off and flipped over the top section of the first leaf, gluing it to
the rest of the leaf, in order to transform the original first line into the
title. (The current verso of the top section still bears, undeleted, the first
line "Night on the prairies[,]" along with the title "Leaf.—" and the number 73, originally 72). Whitman
deleted the pencil numbers 16, 17, and 18 in the lower-left corner of the leaves,
substituting the numbers 1 through 3. This poem became section 15 of the cluster
"Leaves of Grass" in 1860. In
1867 Whitman restored the title "Night on the Prairies" and revised the poem, transferring it to the
"Leaves of Grass" group.
After other repositionings it achieved its current place in the cluster "Whispers of Heavenly Death" in
1881.
