Content:
A late notebook with notes for poem ideas, trial titles, addresses, quotations, and other material, some of which is not in Whitman's hand (see surfaces 13, 29, 36 and 38). A few of the entries contributed to published pieces of poetry. Surfaces 21 and 24 include trial titles for "Fancies at Navesink," first published in
The Nineteenth Century
(August 1885), and reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to
Leaves of Grass
(1888). Surface 32 includes a note to "write a poem . . . to be call'd Yonnondio." Whitman first published a poem under this title in the
Critic
(26 November 1887). The poem was reprinted in "Sands at Seventy," an annex to the 1888 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, and was retained in the 1892 edition. Surface 40 contains, among other notes, a cancelled line reading "yet my soul-dearest leaves—the hardest and the last," which appeared, nearly verbatim, as the closing line of "You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me," first published along with three other poems in
Lippincott's Magazine
(November 1887) under the general title, "November Boughs." These four poems were reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to
Leaves of Grass
(1888).
Content:
Heavily revised draft of the poem "Yonnondio," which first appeared in the
Critic
11 (26
November 1887). It was reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to
Leaves of Grass
(1888).
