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Whitman Archive Title: Great are the myths
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Whitman Archive ID: duk.00259
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Repository ID: MS q 10
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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Genre: poetry, prose
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content:
These lines are a draft of the following lines in the twelfth poem of the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, a poem that was later titled "Great Are the Myths": "GREAT are the myths . . . . I too delight in them, / Great are Adam and Eve . . . . I too look back and accept them; / Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors and priests." (1855, p. 93). The poem went through many revisions through the different editions of
Leaves of Grass
, then was permanently dropped in 1881–1882, except the two couplets that became the poem "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night." The reverse of the manuscript (duk.00938) has cancelled prose beginning "The true friends of the Sabbath."
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