Several sentences of this manuscript's first paragraph are similar to lines from the poem that would eventually be titled "A Song for Occupations." In the manuscript Whitman rhetorically inquires as to the nature of musical perception, asking "Do you know what music does to the soul?" He goes on to mention the effect of instruments on the soul, including the "violencello," "the cornet," and drums. A stanza from the poem, which first appeared as the second poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, begins, "All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the instruments, / It is not the violins and the cornets . . . . it is not the oboe nor the beating drums . . ." (1855, p. 61).
The final paragraph of this manuscript is similar to lines in the poem that would eventually be titled "I Sing the Body Electric." In the manuscript, Whitman writes of how all perceptions and all judgments must, ultimately, be carried out by the soul. "Heave for soundings over the whole sea," Whitman writes, "the lead hits bottom here, if no where else." In the poem, which first appeared as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes of a man's soul and how "he brings everything to the test of himself, / Whatever the survey . . whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings at last only here, / Where else does he strike soundings except here?" (1855, p. 80).
The second page of this manuscript has some similarities to the following lines in the poem that eventually would be titled "Song of Myself": "And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God, / For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, / ... / Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself" (1855, p. 54). Two additional lines in this poem are similar to lines in this manuscript: " I hear the violincello or man's heart's complaint, / And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset" (1855, p. 32).
A line in this manuscript appears in the prose preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass: "Whatever satisfies the soul is truth" (1855, p. xi).
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The sTo that return From it come all every one of tsecondary that nothing except inherently;—
The reason that any thing pleases the Soul, is that it finds its relation there, and awakes it—and the twain kiss each other As As personality man can either suffer or enjoy any further when except in the limits of his individual being; and nothing really enjoys or suffers except the Soul.—honey
How gladly does the soul welcome delights, touches its own the harmony and measure that are part of its essence; its craving for that which we incompletely describe as by
what we call the
more wonderful than at the art and mystery s countless systems of worlds, whose of worlds revolving round their suns—
get but one is the must be the judge and standard of all things, even of the knowledge of God.—the lead this is the place you touch bottom here beyond which stands black Nyx Nyx and labyrinthine chaos.—