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Out from Behind this Mask

About This Item

  • Title: Out from Behind this Mask
  • Date: About 1876
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: bpl.00001
  • Source: The Walt Whitman Collection, Boston Public Library. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: "Out from Behind This Mask" was published first on February 19, 1876, in the New York Tribune and, later that same year, in Two Rivulets. The poem was written in response to an engraving by William J. Linton based on a photograph of Whitman taken by George C. Potter in about 1871. This manuscript was probably composed in 1876, shortly before the poem was published.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Out from Behind this Mask." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 October 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: bpl.00001.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto]

Out from Behind this Mask.

small type

(On an engraved head, a Portrait 'looking 
 at you.')

Out from behind this mask, This general curtain of the face, con-  
 tain'd in me for me, in you for  
 you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sorrows, songs—laughter and  
 tears—O heaven! The passionate, teeming play this cur-  
 tain hid!) This glaze of God's serenest, purest sky, This film of Satan's seething pit, This Soul's geography's map—this lim-  
 itless, small continent—this sound-  
 less sea; Out of the folded convolutions of this  
 globe, This subtler astronomic orb than sun  
 or moon—than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, This condensation of the Universe—nay, here  
 the real Universe—here the Idea—all  
 in this mystic handful wrapt; From these to emanate, to you, whoe'er  
 you are, These burin'd eyes—a Look. Walt Whitman.   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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