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I am that half grown

About This Item

  • Title: I am that half grown
  • Date: Before 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00027
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. 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 composed before 1855. The poem is not known to have been published in Whitman's lifetime. A transcription of the manuscript was first published in Notes and Fragments (1899), edited by Richard Maurice Bucke. The lines are a direct echo of another Whitman manuscript, a draft piece of short fiction: "Of a summer evening."
  • Related Item(s):
    • On the back of this manuscript is a prose draft about municipal legislation. See duk.00885.
    • See wwa.00049.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I am that half grown." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00027.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 that foolish half grown ^angry boy, fallen asleep, The tears of foolish passion yet undried 
  upon my cheeks. Years with all their events pass for me, Some are spent in travel—some in the hun 
  usual hunt for after fortune. I pass through ^the travels and fortunes ? of forty thirty 
  years, and become old, Each in its due order comes and goes, And then a message for me comes. The Entered—yes   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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