Notes and Flanges.—No. 1.

Whitman Archive Title: Notes and Flanges.—No. 1.
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04235
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Library of Congress
Box: 1
Folder: "Drift Sands"
Series: Manuscripts
Date: about 1888
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: Manuscript scrap containing two trial titles and two poetic lines, with corrections. Although Whitman never published a poem with either of these titles, this and several other closely related manuscripts seem to constitute working drafts for the couplet "As idly drifting down the ebb, / Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore," which appears before the final paragraph of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," first published in November Boughs (1888). Most of "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" was drawn from three previously published pieces ("A Backward Glance on My Own Road [1884]," "How I Made a Book" [1886], and "My Book and I" [1887]). The couplet, however, was not part of any of those earlier essays.