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in Poem of Existence

About This Item

  • Title: in Poem of Existence
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00060
  • Source: The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. 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: Edward Grier notes that the handwriting of this manuscript "suggests an early date, possibly before 1860" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 4:1339). Resemblances to passages in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass are perhaps evidence that these notes constitute draft material for that edition. Another possibility is that these notes represent an attempt to recast ideas from the preface into poetry—a process that Whitman used successfully to create several new poems for the second edition of 1856. The note at the top of the manuscript lends credence to the second theory, as it follows the characteristic title structure unique to the second edition, although Whitman never published a poem under the title "Poem of Existence."
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "in Poem of Existence." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00060.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] (in Poem of Existence We call it one the past, and we call another the future But both are alike the present It is not the past, though we call it so,—nor IAnd it is not the future, though we call it so, It is Ready to at, All the while it is the present only—that both 
  pa future and past are the present only.— The curious realities now everywhere—on the surface 
  of the earth,—in the interior of the earth— 
 Are there living creatures in that What is it? Is it liquid fire? Is it fire? 
  solid?—Is it some Is there not 
  toward the core, some vast 
  strange stifling vacuum?—Is there 
  any thing in that vacuum? any ^kind of curious, flying living things, 
  or floating life with its natures fitted?— The existences on the innumerable stars, with their 
  varied degrees of perfection, climate, swiftness 
  —Some probably are but forming,—others not so 
  advanced as the earth—Some are no doubt more 
  advanced— (I should not wonder if the The Then tThere is intercommunion, 
  Nothing can One sphere ch cannot know another sphere, 
  The cCommunion of ^what we call life is with life only, 
  and of what iswe call is after 
  life 
  Each I think 
  Each sphere knows itself only, and h cannot 
  commune beyond itself, 
  Wh Life communes only with life, 
  Whatever it is that follows death,   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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