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My hand will not hurt

About This Item

  • Title: My hand will not hurt
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00254
  • 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 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. Lines in the manuscript are similar to lines that appear in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The numbers written on the manuscript, along with remnants of paste and binding tape along the margin, suggest that the page likely came from a notebook. Lines similar to the last several in this manuscript were also reworked in the notebook "Talbot Wilson."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Notes written on the back of this manuscript leaf also relate to lines in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See uva.00601.
    • See wwa.00578.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "7"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "My hand will not hurt." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00254.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] 7 196 My touch hand will not hurt what it holds, and  
  yet will devour it, That It must remain whole perfect before ^me though I  
  enclose and divide it. Only one minute, only two or three passing bulging sheathed touches, Yet they gather all of me and my spirit into  
  a knot, They hold us so long enough ^there, to show us what  
  life we can be,— And that my ^senses and our flesh, and even a part of my our flesh,  
  is ^seems more than my ^all my our senses and life.— What has become of my senses? One A tTouch of a tag of me tassel, has unhaltered jolted down  
  all of them but feeling; That He pleases the rest so, they have given 
  up to it, in submission, They are all emulous to swap off for what 
  it can do to them. Every one must be a touch, ^would swap off and go with him, Or else she will abdicate, and nibble at the 
  edges end of [illegible] him.—edges of me.—   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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