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It is no miracle now

About This Item

  • Title: It is no miracle now
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00007
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This manuscript was likely written between 1850 and 1855 when Whitman was composing his first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Similar lines appeared in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • On the back of this manuscript is a prose draft also related to "Song of Myself." See duk.00797.
    • See wwa.00079.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "It is no miracle now." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00007.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto] It is no miracle now that wherever 
  we be we are to live on always. Touch is the miracle! Where can we What is it to be lost, or change our 
  dresses, or how deeply can we 
  sleep, when sleep long, when A minute of time, a touch, and a 
  drop of us, can launch immortality. Henceforth After this day, A touch shall henceforth be ^small Little things is shall be are henceforth my my tongue proof and 
  argument It It They shall tells for me that people In them, the smallest least of us the universe eternity 
  has no time for Death, ^each inch of existence is so good exquisite [illegible] ^weighty needful But And, that to pass existence is ^poetry sovereign supreme 
  over all, and what we thought death 
  is but life brought to a finer 
  parturition.— An inch's contact My feeling has made me brave from I am brave from th   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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