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Loveblows

About This Item

  • Title: Loveblows
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • 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 the 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.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Loveblows." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: nyp.00122.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]

  • Loveblows
  • Loveblowsssows
  • Loveapples
  • Loveleaves)
  • Loveclaimbers
  • Loveverdure
  • A Lovevines
  • Lovebranches Loveroot.
  • Loveroot Seedling Climber-blossom—-mine.—
  • Bloss Branched LeVerdure, blossom branch, fruit and vine
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 [no handwritten text supplied here] Juicy climber mine Bulb, silkthread, crotch and f
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