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The sores on my shoulders

About This Item

  • Title: The sores on my shoulders
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00260
  • 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 preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The manuscript is a draft of a section of the fourth poem in that edition, eventually titled "The Sleepers."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Lines on the back of this leaf relate to the manuscript poem "Pictures." See uva.00565.
    • See wwa.00069.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "11"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The sores on my shoulders." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00260.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] 11 He [illegible] The sores on my neck shoulders are from his 
  iron necklace I look on the off on the river with 
  my bloodshot eyes He stops the steamboat and till she 
  will paddle off with away take my woman, and paddle away with her He treats politicians with what   [begin leaf 2 verso]
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