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Poem of the Universalities

  • Whitman Archive Title: Poem of the Universalities
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00735
  • Repository: Catalog of Unlocated Walt Whitman Manuscripts
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Genre: prose, poetry
  • Physical Description: number of leaves unknown, handwritten
  • View Images: currently unavailable
  • Content: Notes, apparently written as two paragraphs, which record ideas for a poem or poems. A transcription of this manuscript, the current location of which is unknown, was published by Richard Maurice Bucke in Notes and Fragments (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 142. The last two phrases of this manuscript were used in the "Poem of Joys," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass : "The memory of only one look—the boy lingering and waiting" (p. 261). The poem was retitled "Poems of Joy" in the 1867 edition. In 1871, when the poem appeared in the volume Passage to India, this line had been deleted and the original title restored. Some copies of the 1871–1872 edition of Leaves of Grass include the sheets from that volume. In subsequent editions, the poem was retitled "A Song of Joys."
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