"Calamus" Manuscripts
The richest collection of manuscripts relating to Whitman's famous
"Calamus" poems is in the Valentine-Barrett Collection at the University
of Virginia. Thirty-five out of the forty-five poems he originally
included in the cluster can be found at Virginia. (We plan to add
manuscripts from other collections as they become available.) We are
grateful to Special Collections at Alderman Library
of the University of Virginia for permission to reproduce these manuscripts.
The forty-five poems in the "Calamus" cluster of Leaves of
Grass (1860) appeared in a numbered sequence but were otherwise
untitled.
Listed below are the numbers and the first words
of most of poems of the 1860 "Calamus" cluster. Clicking on the links
will display the manuscripts.
- 1. [In paths untrodden,]
- 2. [Scented herbage of my breast]
- 3. [These I, singing in spring, collect for
lovers,]
- 7. [Of the terrible question of
appearances,]
- 8. [Long I thought that knowledge alone would
suffice me]
- 9. [Hours continuing long, sore and
heavy-hearted]
- 10. [You bards of ages hence!]
- 11. [When I heard at the close of the day]
- 12. [Are you the new person drawn toward me]
- 13. [Calamus taste]
- 14. [Not heat flames up and consumes]
- 15. [O Drops of me!]
- 16. [Who is now reading this?]
- 17. [Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I
heard he was dead,]
- 18. [City of my walks and joys!]
- 20. [I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,]
- 21. [Music always round me, unceasing,
unbegining]
- 22. [Passing stranger! you do not know how
longingly I look upon you
- 23. [This moment as I sit alone]
- 25. [The prarie-grass dividing]
- 26. [We two boys together clinging]
- 27. [O love!]
- 30. [A promise and gift to California]
- 31. [What ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the
true reckoning?]
- 32. [What think you I take my pen in hand to
record?
- 34. [I dreamed in dream]
- 36. [Earth! my likeness!]
- 37. [A leaf for hand in hand!]
- 39. [Sometimes with one I love, I fill
myself with rage]
- 40. [That shadow, my likeness]
- 41. [Among the men and women, the
multitude]
- 42. [To the young man]
- 43. [O you who I often and silently come where you
are]
- 44. [Here my last words, and the most baffling]
- 45. [Full of life, sweet-blooded, compact,
visible]