About this Item

Title: you woman, mother of children

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between 1850 and 1860

Whitman Archive ID: uva.00137

Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. 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 may have been written in the early 1850s, as Whitman was preparing material for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The language and imagery in the manuscript are similar to language and imagery used in the preface to that edition and in the first poem, eventually titled "Song of Myself."