The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Topple down upon him
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00258
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: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. It is a draft of lines that appear in the fourth poem of that edition, eventually titled "The Sleepers."
Related item: Lines on the back of this manuscript leaf relate to the poem eventually titled "Faces." See uva.00566.
Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "10"
Contributors to digital file: Caitlin Henry, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth M. Price
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Crash Topple down upon him, Curse! [Cursing?] Light! for I am ^you seem to me all one lurid Curse oath curse;
I look down
off the river with my bloodshot eyes, afterI see the steamboat that carries off away my woman.—
Damn him! how he does defile me
^This day, or some other, I will have him and the like of him to curse the do my will upon.
They shall not hide themselves ^lie at peace even in their graves tombs with pennies on their eyes
I will would will
break the lids off their coffins but what
I will have then
I will tear their flesh out from under the
grave‑clothes
I will not listen—I will not spare—I will
am justified of myself::
The I will pursue fFor a million hundred years ^I will pursue those who
have injured me so much.
Though they cover hide themselves with under the lappets
of God I will drag them there pursue them there.
I will stop the drag them out—the sweet marches of heaven ^shall be stopped with
my maledictions.—
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![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00258.002.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00258.002.jpg)