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You villain, Touch

About This Item

  • Title: You villain, Touch
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00002
  • Source: The Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The manuscript includes drafts of lines used in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • The prose drafted on the back of this and several other related manuscript leaves includes ideas and phrases that resemble those used in "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. See duk.00003.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "You villain, Touch." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 January 2026. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: tex.00002.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto] 190 You villain, Touch! what are you doing? Unloose me, Touch! the breath is leaving my 
  throat;! Open your floodgates! you are too much  
  for me.— Fierce Griping Grip'd Wrestler! do you keep your the heaviest 
  grip pull for the last? Will Must you sting me most even the you with the worst spasms worst most fierce most tightly closely ^bite with your teeth at parting? Are you I glad you plunged ^you from the threshold, 
  will ^Must Will you struggle ^[illegible] hardest than worst 
  all [illegible] before? I plunge you from the thres Does it make you ache so to leave me. Take what you like, ^only pass on for I am faintish [illegible] I can contain resist you no longer 
  think I shall drop sink, Take drops the tears of my life soul, if that is 
  what you are after. Only pass to some one else, for I 
  can will contain you no longer. Only pass to some one else ^leap to the nearest landing. ¶Little as your 
  mouth yo[illegible] lips are I am faintish I am faintish; and ^it has drained me  
 dry of my strength.— 79   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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