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Who knows that I shall

About This Item

  • Title: Who knows that I shall
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00262
  • 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. Versions of the manuscript lines appear in the first poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Lines on the back of this manuscript leaf also relate to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See uva.00261.
    • See wwa.00063.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Who knows that I shall." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00262.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] [cut away] Who knows that I shall not myself [cut away]  
  time be a God, as pure and prodigious  
  as any? And when I am I you may be sure I 
  shall do as much good as any.   [begin leaf 2 recto]
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