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I see who you are

About This Item

  • Title: I see who you are
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00263
  • 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 likely written between 1850 and 1855 when Whitman was composing his first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Draft lines on the front of the leaf appeared in the second poem in that edition, eventually titled "A Song for Occupations." The supplied last two lines on the recto, starting with "I see you and stand before you driver of horses," were added to a transcription of the manuscript that appears in Notes and Fragments, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 31. The lines are not currently written on the manuscript.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I see who you are." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00263.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] Now I see who you are . . if nobody else sees, nor you either, I see not so much that you are the quality as of the President  
  or Judge of the Supreme Court, or a millionaire that you are polite or whitefaced or a citizen of our of the an old states, or a citizen of a new state, I see less the quality of Alabamian, or Canadian, 
  British, French, ^off there, . . . . or as a Malay or from Africa . . . . I see forward the or savage ^off there in the woods, the or fisheater in 
  his lair of rocks and sand, the or Chinese ^with his transverse eyes . . . in  
  his roofed boat , ^or . . . . the or wandering nomad, and  
  the or tabounshick at the head of his drove, I see meMan and womean and children in all I see tThese indoors and outdoors ^I see . . . . and all else ^is is behind them or through them,.— I see the wife . . . . and she is not one jot less than the husband, I see the mother . . . . and she is every bit as much as the fath I see you engineer, laboring person, minister, drunkard,  
  editor, immigrant, I see you and stand before you, boatmen and sailors sailors, manofwarsmen and merchantmen and coastman [cut away] I see you and stand before you driver of horses, Son, progenitor   [begin leaf 1 verso] These This are the old new Now for a legend not old, but as new as the newest  
  on the rolling spreading land
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