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Health does not tell any

About This Item

  • Title: Health does not tell any
  • Date: Before or early in 1856
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00789
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 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 prose manuscript includes the line "Which is the poem or any book that is not diseased?" which appeared in a slightly altered form in "Poem of Many in One" in 1856. The manuscript therefore probably was written before or early in 1856.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Health does not tell any." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 April 2026. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00789.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]

Of [erasure] Health does not tell any more in the body, than it tells does in literature.—Which is the poem, or any book, that is not diseased?—(If perfect health appear in a poem, or any book, it surely propogates itself while many nations rise a great while.) Show perfect health and native qualities, and that which possesses them and you are welcome to all the rest.—

  [begin leaf 1 verso]
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