Title: The power by which the
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Before or early in 1855
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00029
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 imagery of this manuscript is echoed in several other manuscripts, as well as in a line of the opening poem of the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass—the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" (see "you know how," "I know a rich capitalist," and "the crowds naked in the"). These relationships suggest that this manuscript dates to early in 1855 or before. Edward Grier has observed that "the writing suggests a date in the 1850s" (see Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:136).
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, Kenneth M. Price, Regan Chasek, Caitlin Henry, Brett Barney, and Stephanie Blalock
The power by which the carpenter plumbs his house, is the same power that dashes his brains out if he fall from the roof.—