My tongue can never be | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: My tongue can never be
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00008
Repository ID: MS q 1
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: On one side of the manuscript leaf are draft poetic lines similar in topic to lines from the opening poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , later titled "Song of Myself." The use of horse-related terms—"harness," "traces," "the bit"—may relate to the extended metaphor developed in following lines: "Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields, / Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, / They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me, / No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, / Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile, / Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me" (1855, pp. 32–33). The prose drafted on the reverse includes ideas and phrases that resemble those used in "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass .