Content:
Two scraps, pasted together, on which are inscribed a heavily revised,
partial draft of the essay first published as "The Poetry of the Future" in the February 12, 1881, issue of the North American Review.
Whitman later revised and republished the essay as "Poetry To-Day in
America—Shakspere—The Future" in
Specimen Days & Collect
(1882–83). It also appeared in
Complete
Prose Works
(1892).