Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Literary Manuscripts
  3. Loose Manuscripts
  4. tex.00079

I cannot guess what the

About This Item

  • Title: I cannot guess what the
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00079
  • Source: The Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Transcribed from a digital image of the original manuscript. 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. The lines do not have any known direct relation to Whitman's published poetry. At one point, however, the manuscript was almost certainly part of "The Great Laws do not," which includes draft lines that appeared in that edition.
  • Related Item(s):
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I cannot guess what the." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: tex.00079.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] I cannot guess what the entertainm[cut away] But I am sure it will be generous enough, I have never yet seen the sign of a niggard 
  in any thing but ^undeveloped man.— [cut away] 35 
 71 
 [cut away]   [begin leaf 1 verso]
Back to top