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America

About This Item

  • Title: America
  • Date: Between 1870 and 1892
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00006
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from The Walt Whitman Archive I: Whitman Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1993), 1:134; Major American Authors on CD-Rom: Walt Whitman (Westport, CT: Primary Source Media, 1997). The transcription was then checked against 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: This manuscript was likely composed in the last two decades of Whitman's career (roughly 1870–1892) when he was more apt to mention other writers explicitly in his poetry. This poem was not published in Whitman's lifetime. Despite its title, this manuscript does not appear to be a draft of the poem "America" that Whitman published in 1888.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "America." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.00006.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]

America

No Homer, Shakspere, Voltaire No palaces, Kings' palaces nor courts, Nor armies, navies on the land, nor navies on the sea, But countless living equal men Average free   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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