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Like Earth O River

About This Item

  • Title: Like Earth O River
  • Date: 1848
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00106
  • 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 the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: These lines were probably drafted as part of the poem published as "The Mississippi at Midnight" on March 6, 1848, in the New Orleans Daily Crescent, though they were not included in the published version of the poem. A revised version of the poem, titled "Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight," was later included in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–3). Whitman left for New Orleans in February, 1848, so this manuscript was written after that date.
  • Related Item(s):
    • Draft lines on the back of this manuscript leaf also relate to the poem eventually titled "Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight." See nyp.00736.
    • See wwa.00599.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Like Earth O River." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: nyp.00106.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] Like Earth O river, you offer us burial Like Existence ^mortal Life is your aimless hurrying on Like Time, with a clutch remorseless, continual That which you take is forever gone. Unlike Time, you begin and end, Unlike Life you've a pathway steady Unlike Earth's are your numberless graves Ever undug, yet ever ready.—   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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