Title: Loveblows
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00122
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: Several words from this manuscript ("loveroot," "silkthread," "crotch," and "vine") were used in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, in the poem that would later be titled "Song of Myself." Other lines and words became part of the opening lines of "Broad-Axe Poem" and "Bunch Poem" in the 1856 edition (later titled "Song of the Broad-Axe" and "Spontaneous Me"). The date of the manuscript is therefore probably before or early in 1855. This manuscript is pasted down, so an image of the back of the leaf is currently unavailable.
Contributors to digital file: Farrah Lehman, Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth M. Price
The irregular tapping of rain off the my house eaves at night when after the storm has lulled.
Broadaxe
The iron leaf all gray-blue spirit so hardened
The hHandle that [came?] produced grown from a little seed sown
Head from the mother's bowels come drawn
Body as shapely and naked and wan
Fibre produced from a little seed sown
Loveroot,
juicy reacher climber-blossomer-mine
Verdure, crotch, branch, crotch fruit bulb and vine
Silk
Juicy climber mine
Bulb, silkthread, crotch and f