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What would it bring you

About This Item

  • Title: What would it bring you
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00732
  • 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: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Although these lines do not appear in the versions of the poems included in that edition, the numbering, paper, and ink are similar to other manuscripts with lines used in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • A draft line of poetry written on the back of this manuscript may relate to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See nyp.00052.
    • See wwa.00575.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "What would it bring you." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: nyp.00732.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] [cut away] What would it do bring you to be elected and take 
  your place in the Capitol? I elect you to understand yourself; that is what 
  all the offices in the republic could not do 242   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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