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I cannot guess what the

  • Whitman Archive Title: I cannot guess what the
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00079
  • Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Box: 2
  • Folder: 6
  • Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Genre: poetry
  • Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
  • View Images: 1 | 2
  • Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The lines do not have any known direct relation to Whitman's published poetry. At one point, however, the manuscript was almost certainly part of "The Great Laws do not" (duk.00264), which includes draft lines that appeared in that edition. On the back of this leaf (tex.00321) is a partial draft of the poem eventually titled "Faces." Both manuscript drafts were probably originally continuous with manuscript drafts on the leaf from which this leaf was cut.
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