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The horizon's edge

About This Item

  • Title: The horizon's edge
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00265
  • 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. The manuscript includes drafts of lines used in the first and tenth poems in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "There Was a Child Went Forth," respectively.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "15"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The horizon's edge." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00265.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] 15 Odor the smell of the salt marsh, and of the mud and sea‑weed, 
  sea‑gulls—the sights of tThe horizon's edge, the 
  faint shriek of the the flying seacrow, the unearthly laugh of the laughing-gull, and the 
  odor of saltmarsh and shoremud. odor.— The song of the phoebebird, the blossoms of appletrees 
  and the soft   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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