[Long I thought that knowledge]

Whitman Archive Title: [Long I thought that knowledge]
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00321
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
Folder: 50-51
Date: 1857-1859
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 3 leaves, leaves 1 and 2 15 x 9.5 cm; leaf 3 6.5 x 9.5 cm, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Content: On three pieces of white wove paper (the first two 15 x 9.5 cm, the third 6.5 x 9.5 cm), in black ink, with revisions in the same ink and in pencil. Whitman also penciled in the numbers 7, 8, and 8 1/2 in the lower-left corner of each page. Pinholes at the head and in the center of each page. This was the fifth poem of the original sequence "Live Oak, with Moss"; the poem number is inscribed ornamentally, as with the Roman numerals Whitman used for other "Live Oak" poems, and a wavy line appears after the last verse. The lines on the first leaf became verses 1-5 of section 8 of "Calamus" in 1860; the second leaf's lines ("Take notice, you Kanuck woods") became verses 6-10; and the lines on the half-page ("I am indifferent to my own/ songs—") became verses 11-12. There were no further appearances of this poem during the poet's lifetime, Whitman having canceled it in his "Blue Book Copy" of the 1860 Leaves.