Title: I know as well as
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00051
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 manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Lines from the manuscript appear in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The ideas and some of the language are also similar to other early manuscripts that relate to the second poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves, ultimately titled "A Song for Occupations," and part of a cluster titled "Debris" that appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass (see "Priests," "Do I not prove myself," and "[Fa]bles, traditions").
Related item: A series of notes written on the back of this manuscript are dated March 20, 1854. See duk.00887.
Contributors to digital file: Jennifer R. Overkamp, Stacy Provan, Brett Barney, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth M. Price, Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, and Nicole Gray
I know as well as you that the Bibles iare ^divine revelations of God
But I
know
say
that
any
each
leaf of grass and
every
each
hair of my
breast and beard is
^also equally also a
a more developed
revelation
of God just as divine
But Do you stop there?
Have you no more faith than that?
Can you I live in no such infinitessimal meanness as that?
Do you Would you bribe God the Lord ^Adonais with same stray change?
I disdain and denounce your shallow
I ^ outbid you, shallow hucksters!
Such infirm
All you
have ever
pile up
said and done
compiled
composed
is
are
not august
enough to
dent
endow
answer
tally
a leaf of grass
the partition
of
in
my
nostrils; nose;
^I say that All the churches
ever built
now standing
fail of
were
richly
pious
well
employed in orisons to one a twig from
an sprig of parsley;
^I tell you All ^that your caste have said ever said about Go
narrated
said
and about
^Belus
Haephestos
God
^Osiris and [illegible]
Belus and Jehovah
is a ^too shallow description
fonr
one man's soul;
I
see
^claim these for that fr one of those framers ^over the way, framing the a house.—
in
that
each
man more
the young man, ^there with rolled up shirt-sleeves and
sweat on his divine superb face, more than your craft
[cut away] [illegible] three thousand years ago
[illegible]for
Kronos
or Zeus his
son or Hercules his grandson.