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Life and Death

About This Item

  • Title: Life and Death
  • Date: 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00213
  • 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 draft of "Life and Death," which was published first in the New York Herald on May 23, 1888. The manuscript was probably written in the spring of 1888, shortly before the poem was published.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 verso, in unknown hand: "ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF A POEM BY WALT WHITMAN"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Life and Death." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.00213.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] sent H May 19 pub'd

Life and Death

The two old ^simple problems ever For eEver intertwined For By [illegible] each successive age pass'd on  
  insoluble, pass'd on, To ours to-day—and we pass on. the same ^Close home, Elusive, simple, present, baffled, grappled, foil'd baffled,   [begin leaf 1 verso] ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF A POEM BY WALT WHITMAN
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