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Whitman Archive Title: Priests!
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Whitman Archive ID: loc.00013
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
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Box: 28
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Folder: Priests! (1855). A.MS. draft.
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Series: Literary File
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Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, 10 x 20 cm, handwritten
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Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The general theme of this manuscript, as well as the specific wording of one of the lines, resembles a portion of the second poem in that edition, eventually entitled "A Song for Occupations": "When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate as effectually as the young silvermiths or bakers, or the masons in their overalls / ... / I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women" (1855, p. 64). Language and ideas from this manuscript appear in other manuscripts that relate to the first poem in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, ultimately titled "Song of Myself." See in particular the lines: "The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, / The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious, / Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or print" (1855, p. 46). Based on its similarity to other manuscripts, this manuscript may also relate to lines 39-43 in "Debris," a cluster published in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
: "I WILL take an egg out of the robin's nest in the orchard, / I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden, and go and preach to the world; / You shall see I will not meet a single heretic or scorner, / You shall see how I stump clergymen, and confound them, / You shall see me showing a scarlet tomato, and a white pebble from the beach" (1860, p. 424). On the verso (loc.07512) is a proposition for a poem "embodying the sentiment of perfect happiness." Pin marks and leftover bits of glue near the bottom of the leaf suggest it was at one point attached to something else.
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