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I am not content now

About This Item

  • Title: I am not content now
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00026
  • 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 probably written in the early 1850s, as Whitman was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The ideas and phrasing of the manuscript are similar to those used in the first poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The manuscript has been mounted and framed with a portrait, so an image of the back of the leaf is not currently available.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I am not content 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.00026.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] I am not content now with a mere 
  majority . . . . I must have the 
  love of all men and all women, If there be one left in any country who has 
  no faith in me, I will travel 
  to that country, and go to that 
  one, and stand upright before  
  him,—
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