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tainting the best of the

About This Item

  • Title: tainting the best of the
  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00524
  • Source: The Oscar Lion Papers, 1914–1955, New York Public Library, New York, N.Y. Transcribed from our own digital image of orginal manuscript. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: On the back of this leaf, Whitman drafted trial lines of the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Based on this and the handwriting, Edward Grier dates this manuscript to before or early in 1855 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:179).
  • Related Item(s):
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "tainting the best of the." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 28 October 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: nyp.00524.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] tainting the best of the rich orchard of himself . . . . and he who anyway does not respect his own organs and cherish them and strengthen them, and keep himself clean not only on his face but outside and inside—need not let that man young or old never de deceive himself with the folly that the bad sore stuff and the under is hid by the cloth he wears and his makes no avowal.—Though the secret is well hid, though the eye does not see, nor the hand touch, nor the nose smell, the rank odor strikes out   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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