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"Summer Duck"

About This Item

  • Title: "Summer Duck"
  • Date: Between 1852 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00158
  • Source: Wood drake |  The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the notebooks, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: These pages were written by Whitman in the early to mid-1850s. William White described the pages as "torn from a tall notebook" (Daybooks and Notebooks [New York: New York University Press, 1978], 770–773). White noted a possible relationship between the opening words and the first poem of the 1855 edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The lines at the end of this manuscript were also reworked and used for a different section of the same poem. Matt Miller has noted that the information in the first several notes was taken from J. P. Giraud Jr., The Birds of Long Island (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1844). For further discussion of the dating and importance of this notebook, see Miller, Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 26–29.
  • Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney Kirsten Clawson Nicole Gray Ashlyn Stewart Kevin McMullen
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. ""Summer Duck"." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 05 October 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.00158.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 ]loc_nhg.00015.jpg
"Summer Duck" or "Wood Duck" ^"wood drake" very gay, including in its colors white, 
  red, yellow, green, blue, &c crowns violet—length 20 inches 
 —common in the United States—often by creeks streams and 
  ponds—rises and slowly circuits—selects hollow 
  trees to breed in—keep in parties—generally move in pairs at least King Bird "Tyrant Flycatcher" length 8½ inches—loud shrill voice— 
 attacks hawks and crows as if for amusement—when tired it 
  retreats to some stake or limb, with a triumphant twitter.— Peewee—^one of the earliest comers in spring—builds nest often under the 
  eaves of a deserted house or barn—pleasing note— "Redstart"—beautiful small bird arrives here latter part of April, 
  returns south late in September—common in 
  woods and along roadside and meadow—feeds on insects— 
 active—has a lively twitter.— ☞All the above are met on Long Island
young squaw 
  Papoose—old squaw

One personal deed,—one great effusion of some grand strength and will of man—may go far beyond law, custom, and all other conventionalisms—and seize upon the heart of the whole race, utterly defiant of authority—or argument against them it.—

Do you suppose the world is finished, at any ^certain time—like a contract for paving a street?—Do you suppose because the American government has been formed, and public schools established, we have nothing more to do but take our ease, and make money, and let this grow sleep out the rest of the time?

Fear delectation! delicatesse grace! Fear grace!— delicatesse!— al del-i-ca-teśs— These precede the (what is it in fruit when just ripe) terrible ripeness of nature—the decay of the ruggedness of a maen—the and of a nationns.—

  [ begin leaf 1 verso ]loc_nhg.00016.jpg
Go on! go on! we ha'n't got time

Ens l—a being, existence, essence, that recondite part of a substance from which all its qualities flow, (old term in metaphysics)

Look out there's "Take heed to yourselves—there's a mad man stalking loose through in the ship, with a knife in his hands,"—such was the warning sung out at night more than once below in the Old Jersey prison ship, ^1780 moored at the Wallabout, in the revolution.—Utter derangement was a frequent symptom of the aggravated sicknesses that prevailed there.—The prisoners were allowed no light at night.—

No physicians were allowed provided.—

Sophocles, Eschylus, and Euripides flourished about the time of the birth of Socrates 468 B.C. ^and years afterward.—Great as their remains are, they were transcended by other works that have not come down to us.—Those other works, often gained the first prizes.—

In Eschylus the figures are shadowy, vast, and majestic—dreaming, moving with haughty grandeurs, strength and will

In Sophokles​ , the dialogue and feelings are more like reality and the interest approaches home,—great poetical beauty.—

In Euripides, love and compassion—scientific refinement,—something like skepticism.—This writer was a hearer of Socrates.—

Phallic festivals.—wild mirthful processions in honor of the god Dionysus (Bacchus)—in Athens, and other parts of Greece—unbounded license—mocking jibes and irony—epithets and biting insults

To the Poor—

I have my place among you Is it nothing that I have preferred to be poor, rather than 
  to be rich? The road to riches is easily open to me, But I do not choose it. I choose to stay with you.—
  [ begin leaf 2 recto ]loc_nhg.00017.jpg

[cut away](bring in a few[cut away] of ancient, and modern times—the worst I can find and the most comely and their ope effects— practical operations.)

Does any one tell me that it is the part of a man to obey such enactments as these?

I tell you the world is demented with this very obedience—

When a man, untrammeling himself from blind obedience to pries the craft of priests and politicians, branches out with his own sovereign will and strength—knowing that himself the unspeakable ^greatness of himself, or of the meanest of his fellow creatures—expands far beyond all the laws and governments of the earth—then he begins really to be a man.—Then he is great.—

From the baldness of birth to the baldness of burials and shrouds

Something behind or afterward.—Leave the impression that no matter what is said, there is something greater to say—something behind still more marvellous and beautiful—

  [ begin leaf 2 verso ]loc_nhg.00018.jpg

[cut away] He does better with spare[cut away] out, hunger, starvation, opposing enemies, contentious

Riches.—It is only the mean and vulgar appetite that craves money and property ^as the first and foremost of its wants

I have appeared among you to say that all what you do is 
  right, and that what you affirm is right; But that it is they are only the alphabet? of right.— And that you shall use them as beginnings and first attempts.— I have not appeared to take any with violent 
  hands to pull up by the roots any thing that has grown, Whatever has grown, has grown well.— Do you suppose fancy there was any flaw ^is some waters in the 
  semen of the first perpetual copulation? Do you believe of suppose the universe [illegible]celestial laws of might be reformed and 
  rectified? [torn away]Virtue and about Vice [cut away] [torn away]what[torn away]
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