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[As we write]

About This Item

  • Title: [As we write]
  • Date: 3 April 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00942
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 3 April 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "[As we write]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00942.xml (TEI)
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☞As we write, the genial sunshine, gift of the good God, is making all creation glad with its radiance and warmth. It is one of those divine days of which we more often dream and read and sing than partake. Not a shingle, however antique and dusty, but is glorified, even in the most obscure alley, by this all-pervading gorgeousness of the sky. Not a child upon the pave but laughs, unconsciously, indeed, to itself, more gleefully; not a lady trails her drooping drapery along the street which stretches like a line of light toward the River, but ‘walks in beauty like a thing of life,’ conscious of the divine enchanting ravishment of the day and of herself; not a mortal man—but, if he can, will do as we mean to do,—depart into the rural precincts, and there afar from the clamor of revivals, remember that

God made the Country. Man made the Town.1

Notes:

1. This is a quote from the English poet and hymn writer William Cowper (1731–1800). [back]

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