Aye, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend

About This Item

Title: Aye, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend
Date: About 1889
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00107
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 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: This manuscript is a rejected linegroup from the poem "Death's Valley," which was published first in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in April, 1892. It was probably composed in 1889, shortly after Whitman received a request from H. M. Alden, editor of Harper's, to write a poem to accompany a painting by George Inness entitled "The Valley of the Shadow of Death."
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Aye, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 23 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: loc.00107.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]

Aye, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend
that f valley: Preachers, musicians, poets, painters, always render it, Philosophs exploit—the battle‑field, the ship at
sea, the myriad beds, all lands, All, all the past have enter'd, the ancientest
humanity we know, Syria's, India's, Egypt's, Greece's, Rome's; Till now for us under our very eyes spreading
the same to‑day, Grim, ready ~~^^{for our eyes,}~~ for entrance, yours and mine, ~~^^{our eyes,}~~ Here, here 'tis limned. # Yet, [cut away] [begin leaf 1 verso]