The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: The horizon's edge
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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 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"
Contributors to digital file: Stephanie Blalock, Caitlin Henry, Nicole Gray, and Leslie Ianno
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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
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![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva_jc.00305.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva_jc.00305.jpg)