[The Time and Lands] | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: [The Time and Lands]
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00113
Repository ID: #3829-i
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts at the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Box: 2
Folder: 8
Date: about 1872
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 2 leaves, 18.5 x 18.5 cm to 20 x 18 cm, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Content: The first two entries on Leaf 1 appear to contain general notes for a poem; the second entry reads, "Make a demand for the Ideal, (or rather idea of the Ideal of the real)." The lines are followed by the note "in the piece," which leads up to several trial verses eventually incorporated in the second verse paragraph of numbered section 5 of "Thou Mother With Thy Equal Brood." The accompanying leaf contains general notes about creating a song or chant to celebrate America and her "best men." A cartoon hand singles out the lines "All the states / East & west, / north & south / Brotherhood / an equal union" which prefigure the whole poem, but particularly such lines as "South, North, West, East, / (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, / son, endear'd alike, forever equal,)" in the same section projected on Leaf 1. The poem "Thou Mother With Thy Equal Brood" was composed with the title "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" and presented as the Dartmouth commencement poem on June 26, 1872. The poem was first published in a volume of the same name with seven other poems also in 1872.