Physical Description: number of leaves unknown, handwritten
View Images: currently unavailable
Content:
Edward F. Grier includes a transcription of this missing manuscript in
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York University, 1984), 405–410. Grier's transcription is pieced together from "photostats of six surviving pages" (held in the Harned collection at the Library of Congress) and from two partial transcriptions, made by Emory Holloway and currently held at the University of Kansas, as well as Clifton Joseph Furness's
Walt Whitman's Workshop: A Collection of Unpublished Manuscripts
(Harvard University Press, 1928) and Emory Holloway's
The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman
(Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921). This manuscript includes an early draft of "In Paths Untrodden," first published as the first section of "Calamus" in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Also included in this manuscript is a draft of "That Shadow My Likeness," first published in
New-York Saturday Press
4 February 1860 as "Poemet." This poem later appeared as "Calamus No. 40,"
Leaves of Grass
(1860); as "That Shadow My Likeness,"
Leaves of Grass
(1867); and, with slight changes in the text, in
Leaves of Grass
(1881–1882). Other portions of this manuscript are suggestive of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", first published in
New-York Saturday Press
(24 December 1859) as "A Child's Reminiscence." This poem later appeared as "A Word Out of the Sea,"
Leaves of Grass
(1860); as "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," in "Sea-Shore Memories,"
Passage to India
(1871); and finally in "Sea-Drift,"
Leaves of Grass
(1881–1882).
Content:
Printer's copy of the poem "A Child's Reminiscence," which appeared in the
New-York
Saturday Press
on
24 December 1859. This poem later appeared as "A Word Out of the Sea"
in
Leaves of Grass
(1860); as
"Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking" in "Sea-Shore Memories,"
Passage to India
(1871);
and finally in "Sea
Drift,"
Leaves of Grass
(1881–82).
Content:
An early notebook with several notes for poem ideas, trial lines,
addresses, and drawings. Material in this
notebook relates to poems ultimately titled "Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking," "By Blue
Ontario's Shore," "The City Dead-House," and "Chanting the Square Deific." Some of the trial verses in this notebook were
published posthumously as "[I Stand and
Look],"
"Ship of Libertad," and "Of My Poems." Within the notebook is
also a poem draft that Whitman has titled called "The Incomplete."
Content:
A scrap of paper with an underlined title written across the top reading
"Out of A Hundred
Years" and subtitled "in Prose and Verse Melanged." In the
top margin is written "?Vistas."
Content:
The page appears to be a draft of a title page for a manuscript titled
"Leave-taking
Words" or "Last
Ripples (A Prelude to Passage to India)." At the bottom of
the page are four lines from the end of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," first
published as "A Child's
Reminiscence" in 1859. The lines from the poem are
cleanly written, suggesting that they were meant to serve as an epigraph
for Whitman's manuscript. "Passage to India" was published first in 1871. On the
verso is a draft of a stanza of "Eidólons," first published in 1876. The verso also contains prose comments on the war, of which the connection to Whitman's published works is unknown.
