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are you and me

About This Item

  • Title: are you and me
  • Date: 1855 or 1856
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: upa.00221
  • Source: Walt Whitman Collection, 1842–1957, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. 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: Most of the lines in this manuscript amount to a poetic rendering of sentences and phrases drawn from the prose preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass and constitute a partial draft of the 1856 poem "Poem of Many In One," which eventually became "By Blue Ontario's Shore." The line at the bottom of this manuscript, partially cut away, was also drawn from the 1855 preface but was used in the 1856 poem "Liberty Poem for Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Australia, Cuba, and the Archipelagoes of The Sea," which Whitman titled, in its final version, "To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Draft lines on the back of this manuscript also relate to the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass. See upa.00005.
    • See wwa.00153.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "are you and me." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: upa.00221.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], the ^[cut away] compact, peace, [cut away]  
  are you and me, The perpetual arrivals of immigrants are you and me, The Its young men's manner's, speech, dress, friendships 
  are you and me, ^The Its Crimes, enormities lies, defections, slavery, are you and me, The Its Congress is you and me—the officers, capitols, armies, 
  ships, are you and me, The Its inventions, science, shchools, are you and me, The Its deserts, forests, clearings, settlements, log houses, hunters, are you and me, Its ships, fisheries, whaling, gold‑digging are you and me, The Its paved cities, wharves, wealth, avenues, dwellings, 
  are you and me. The perpetual arrivals of immigrants are you and me. The north, south, east, west, are you and me, Natural and artificial are you and me, Liberty, language, poems, employments, are you and me, Failures, successes, births, deaths, are you and me, Past, presteent, future, are ^only you and me.— I swear I will am cannot ^to evade any part of myself, Not America, nor any attribute of America, Not my body—not friendship, hospitality, procreation, Not my soul—not the last explanation of prudence, Not faith, sin, defiance, nor any of the dispositions or duties of myself, Not liberty—not to cheer up slaves and horrify 
  despots, [cut away] the show of the tushes of power and [cutaway]   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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