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A nation announcing itself

About This Item

  • Title: A nation announcing itself
  • Date: 1855 or 1856
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00030
  • 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 consists of draft lines that were published first under the title "Poem of Many in One" in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem was revised many times throughout Whitman's career and, in its final form, was titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
  • Related Item(s):
    • On the back of this leaf is a series of draft notes and lines related to the poem published first as "Poem of Salutation" in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass, and later as "Salut Au Monde!" See duk.00886.
    • See wwa.00055.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "A nation announcing itself." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00030.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] A nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I  
  shall can be appreciated; I reject none, receive all, reproduce all in modern  
 forms. A breed whose testimony is behaviour, What we are, we are . . . nativity is answer enough  
 to all objections, We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, We are executive by ourselves . . . we are sufficient  
 in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves, Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves . . . pious Whatever or appears, whatever does not appear, we  
 are beautiful or sinful in ourselves.—   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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