Content:
On a composite leaf of white wove paper consisting of two sections (8.5 x 9 and
6.5 x 9 cm) pasted together. Both sections are in black ink but, as Bowers notes,
the lower verses were inscribed using a darker, thicker pen; the upper section is
unrevised, but the lower section bears several alterations in the original ink.
Pinholes at top of both sections and in the current center. Whitman numbered the
page 9, in pencil, in the lower-left corner. Originally the sixth section of the
sequence "Live Oak, with
Moss," this poem was revised to form section 32 of "Calamus" in 1860, and in 1867 was
retitled "What Think You I Take My
Pen in Hand?"
