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- uva.ead01_uva.00246
[Was it I who walked the]
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Whitman Archive Title: [Was it I who walked the]
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Whitman Archive ID: uva.00246
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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
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Folder: 50-51
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Date: 1857-1859
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Genre: poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf that folds out, 21.5 x 16 cm, handwritten
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Content:
These leaves comprise two sections of a poem inscribed (with very few alterations)
on the first and third sides of a folded half-sheet of paper. On the first side of
the folded leaf a blue pencil was used to correct a pencil number 7 to a 1, and on
the third side the blue pencil corrected a pencil 8 to a 2. The five verses
beginning "Was it I who walked the / earth..." were not used in "Calamus," but the five lines
beginning "Scented herbage of my breast" became the opening verses of section 2 of
the cluster in the 1860
Leaves of Grass
. In the 1867 and
later editions the first line was used as the title of the poem.
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