Title: As the turbulence of the
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00025
Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. 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: The echo of the phrase "vegetables and minerals" in the third poem of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855) suggests the possibility that Whitman drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s, as he was composing the poems that were published there. It is also possible, however, that the manuscript is unrelated to the first edition and was written during a slightly later period.
Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney, Nicole Gray, and Chris Forster
we are
As the soiledness turbulence of the
expressions of the
earth,—as the great heat
and the great cold—as
the soiledness of animals
and the bareness of
vegetables and minerals
No more than these th were
the roughs among men shocking
to her