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- loc.ead02_loc.00025
No doubt the efflux of the soul
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Whitman Archive Title: No doubt the efflux of the soul
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Whitman Archive ID: loc.00025
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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: 38
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Folder: Undated Thoughts, Ideas, and Trial lines (3 V.)
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Series: Notes and Notebooks
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Date: Before 1855
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Genre: prose, poetry
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Physical Description: 14 leaves, handwritten
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Content:
This notebook consists almost entirely of prose. However, the ideas and language developed throughout the notebook can be linked to a number of poems that appeared in
Leaves of Grass
, including "Song of Myself," "Great are the Myths" (ultimately shortened to a few lines and titled "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night"), "Faces," "The Sleepers," and "To Think of Time," versions of which appeared in
Leaves of Grass
in 1855. One manuscript passage is similar to a passage in the preface to the 1855 edition. Thus, this notebook was almost certainly written before that date. Content from the first several paragraphs of this notebook was also used slightly revised in "Song of the Open Road," first published in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
as "Poem of the Road."
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