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My tongue can never be

About This Item

  • Title: My tongue can never be
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00008
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: The similarity of this manuscript to other drafts of lines that were used in poems published in the 1855 Leaves of Grass would suggest that it was probably written between 1850 and 1855. Although none of these lines relate directly to lines published in that edition, the topic and some of the comparisons are similar to what would ultimately become sections 28 through 30 of "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • This leaf is held with another small leaf in plastic casing. The prose drafted on the back of these and several other related manuscript leaves includes ideas and phrases that resemble those used in "Unnamed Lands," a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. See duk.00003.
    • See wwa.00041.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "My tongue can never be." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00008.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] 204 My tongue must can never be content with pap harness 
  from this after this, It c will not talk m[illegible] in traces, It gives up the bit, and ^[illegible] any more. So little a thing as a touch has unhaltered [illegible] [cut away]   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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