What shall the great poet be then?

Whitman Archive Title: What shall the great poet be then?
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00303
Repository ID: MS q 33
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Date: 1850s
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: Note about "the great poet" that possibly contributed to a passage in the prose preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , in which Whitman writes that the "swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float off and leave no remembrance" (1855, p. xii). This scrap has been attached by a collector or archivist to a backing sheet, together with "It seems to me," "The most superb beauties," and "Make no quotations."