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I last winter observed the

  • Whitman Archive Title: I last winter observed the
  • Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00022
  • Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett suggest that the mention of a "wild-drake" may connect this scrap to the line about a "wood-drake" in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" ( Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition , ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley [New York: New York University Press, 1965]). However, nothing else about the words in this manuscript suggest a connection to that line. The appearance of the paper, ink, and the letter forms do correspond with those in other pre-1855 manuscripts.
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