With the sun and sky | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: With the sun and sky
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00510
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: 1
Folder: 38
Repository Title: Glimpses of Walt Whitman from 1877 to '87
Date: Around 1865
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1
Content: A manuscript containing poetic lines with no known relation to any of Whitman's published work. One of the notes at the bottom of the manuscript, "Photo for Pratt," is likely a reference to Alfred Pratt, a young soldier who Whitman befriended at Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C. in 1865. In an August 7, 1865 letter to Whitman , Pratt requests "potographs of Abe and Washington," and in his August 26, 1865 reply to Pratt , Whitman notes that he has sent the picture. If this is the photograph referred to in this manuscript, then the note was written in August 1865, with the poetic lines likely composed slightly earlier (likely the early 1860s). The manuscript is pasted down to a backing sheet, making the verso inaccessible.