About this Item

Title: Enter into the thoughts of

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1855

Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00112

Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. Transcribed from a digital image of the original manuscript. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.

Editorial note: This manuscript was likely written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing materials for the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The idea of "[e]nter[ing] into the thoughts of the different theological faiths" described in this manuscript probably connects to the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman also used the term "koboo" in that poem. Gary Schmidgall glosses the term "koboo" as referring to "a native of Sumatra," and Andrew Lawson has noted that Whitman apparently picked up the reference from a book by Walter M. Gibson, an American adventurer (Walt Whitman, Selected Poems, 1855–1892, ed. Gary Schmidgall [New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999], 488; Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006], 91). The manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the reverse is not available.