Content:
On a surface made by pasting together six scraps of paper (back of a discarded
envelope from Geo. S. Woodhull and Son, Law Offices, Camden, postmarked
Apr 6; back of a discarded letter, dated New York, March 29,
1880; and other scraps), a late draft of the poem "The Dalliance of the
Eagles," about 120 words, showing a few minor variations from
the first-published version of 1880.
Content:
Written in ink on a proof of "The Dalliance of the Eagles,"
"Ah, little knows the
Laborer,"
"Hast never come to thee an
hour?," and "My
Picture-Gallery," are 14 words of notations in Whitman's
hand. The proof has been pasted to a heavy piece of paper, on the verso
of which is "A Riddle
Song," part of "Italian Music in Dakota," and a clipped headline reading
"The Society Articles Save Labor. Lighten the Labor for Mother."
Whitman Archive Title: The dalliance of the eagles
Content:
The poem was first published in the November 1880 issue of
Cope's Tobacco Plant
and became one
of the new poems in the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, where it appeared in the cluster "By the Roadside." At some point
this leaf was pasted to a cardboard print of a photograph of Whitman stamped
"Thomas C. Watkins" on the verso, but almost identical to one attributed by Henry
Scholey Saunders, author of
100 Walt
Whitman Photographs
, to the studio of Frederick Gutekunst in
Philadelphia, and reproduced in the 1889 pocket edition of
Leaves of Grass
.
