About this Item

Title: ground where you may rest

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1855

Whitman Archive ID: rut.00025

Source: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 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 manuscript fragment includes several lines of prose that became, after slight revision, lines of poetry in the initial poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass (ultimately titled "Song of Myself"). The lines that appear in the poem begin with "Sit awhile wayfarer" and continue through the end of the manuscript, ending with "and open the gate for your egress hence." These lines would remain, with minor revisions, through all the various versions of "Song of Myself." The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "American literature must become distinct," "dithyrambic trochee," and "The only way in which."

Related item: On the back of this manuscript is a prose note with no known connection to Whitman's published work. See rut.00024.