Content:
Poetry manuscript titled "Pictures," approximately six lines, heavily revised. The
first few lines of this manuscript appeared, further revised, in "The Runner," first
published in the 1867 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The middle section of the
manuscript is possibly related to "Song of the Banner at Daybreak," which was
first published in 1865 in
Drum-Taps
. A different version of last the
two lines of the manuscript appear in another poetry draft, also titled
"Pictures," now in Yale University's Beinecke Library.
The writing on the verso is not Whitman's.
Content:
Two sets of deleted verses constitute adaptations of lines from Whitman's pre-1855
unpublished notebook "Pictures" "Now this is the fable of the mirror" and "And Now this is
the fable of a beautiful statue." Two other deleted potential fables ideas also
appear: "The trained runner" and "The five old men." At the foot of the leaf
appears the note "last piece (still another Death Song— Death Song with
prophecies." All of the sections are demarcated with horizontal lines. Based on
Whitman's use of the tax blank, the manuscript appears to be a set of notes he
made between 1857 and 1859 while preparing the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The "Poem of Fables" as such never
materialized, but a poem simply titled "Fables" was incorporated into the second
section of the poem "Passage to
India", first published in 1871. Whitman's "Pictures" were not published in their entirety until
1925. Whitman uses the phrase "well-train'd runner" in "The Runner", a poem which first appeared in Leaves of
Grass in 1867.
