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I am a curse

About This Item

  • Title: I am a curse
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00256
  • 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. It is a draft of lines that appeared in the fourth poem in that edition, eventually titled "The Sleepers."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Fragmentary poetic lines on the back of this manuscript leaf may relate to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See uva.00602.
    • See wwa.00579.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "8"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I am a curse." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00256.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] 8 I am black a curse: a black slave negro spoke felt thought thinks me You You He could annot speak for himyourself, slave negro.—I lend you him my own mouth tongue A black I darted like a snake from his ^[illegible] mouth.— I My eyes are bloodshot, they look down the river, A steamboat carries off paddles away my woman and children.— Around my neck I am T The His iIron necklace and the red sores of my the shoulders  
  I do not feel mind, The hHopples and ball at my the ancles, ^and tight cuffs at the wrists does ^must not 
  detain me I ^will go down the river, mywith ^the sight of my bloodshot eyes, I ^will go in to the steamboat that paddles ^off my wife woman and child A I do not stop with my woman and children, I burst down the saloon doors, and crash on  
  party of passengers.— But for them, I sh too should have been on the steamboat [cut away] I should soon   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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