Content:
Lightly revised handwritten copy of a poem titled "Broadway, 1861," which
is unrelated to the poem "Broadway" that Whitman published in the New York
Herald
in 1888. Harold W.
Blodgett and Sculley Bradley note the similarity of "Broadway, 1861" to the opening poem of
Drum-Taps,
"First O Songs for a
Prelude, " particularly "in its theme of the arousing of the energies of the
great city—and of the nation—to the war." They also note this similarity in the two poems composed on
the reverse of this leaf, "I Too Am Drawn . . ." and "I Have Lived .
. ."