Content:
These leaves comprise two sections of a poem inscribed (with very few alterations)
on the first and third sides of a folded half-sheet of paper. On the first side of
the folded leaf a blue pencil was used to correct a pencil number 7 to a 1, and on
the third side the blue pencil corrected a pencil 8 to a 2. The five verses
beginning "Was it I who walked the / earth..." were not used in "Calamus," but the five lines
beginning "Scented herbage of my breast" became the opening verses of section 2 of
the cluster in the 1860
Leaves of Grass
. In the 1867 and
later editions the first line was used as the title of the poem.
Content:
The verses on the recto became lines 6-40 of section 2 of "Calamus" in the 1860
edition. Section 2 of the Calamus group was permanently retitled "Scented Herbage of my Breast" in
1867. On the verso appears a draft of an editorial, "Important Questions in Brooklyn.—," which Whitman
apparently never published but which seems to have inspired at least two published
editorials on the Brooklyn Water Works and the political quarrels surrounding
control of the project. The editorials appeared in the Brooklyn
Times
of March 15 and 16, 1859.
