Content:
This manuscript contains two written statements or observations, one about locusts and the other about sunflowers. Although the text is written with the hanging indentation characteristic of Whitman's poetry, it is unclear if these were ever intended as poetic lines. The note about locusts—"
Locust
whirring they come in July & are loud in August"—is similar to a description of Washington, D.C., in a piece of Civil War journalism titled "Washington in the Hot Season." In this article, published in the
New-York Times
on August 16, 1863, Whitman writes of the grounds around the U.S. Capitol building in the summertime and notes that there are "locusts whirring." Whether this manuscript directly contributed to this piece of journalism or not, it seems likely that it was composed in the 1850s or 1860s. On the reverse of the leaf (tex.00005) are approximately five lines toward a poem about the effects of war that was never published in Whitman's lifetime.
