The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Sailing Down the Mississippi at Midnight
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: February 1848
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00106
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: This is a partial draft of the poem published as "The Mississippi at Midnight" on March 6, 1848, in the New Orleans Daily Crescent. A revised version of the poem, titled "Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight," was later included in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–3). Whitman left for New Orleans in February, 1848, so this manuscript was almost certainly written in that month.
Related item: Draft lines on the back of this manuscript leaf also probably relate to the poem eventually titled "Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight." See nyp.00106.
Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney, Nicole Gray, and Chris Forster
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Sailing down the Mississippi,
of a Clo[cut away]
at
Midnight.—
Vast black folds of a pall from skyward Vast and black starless, the pall of heaven
Laps on the trailing pall below
And plunging athwart the solemn ^onward, onward, amid ^in solemn darknes[s?]
As if to the Sea of the Lost we go.—
———
Now drawn nigher the ^ river's rim edge of the river of the river
Wierd like creatures suddenly rise
[cut away]m
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