Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Literary Manuscripts
  3. Loose Manuscripts
  4. uva.00271

Merely What I tell is

About This Item

  • Title: Merely What I tell is
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00271
  • 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: These manuscript lines were probably written in the 1850s. They bear a strong resemblance to ideas expressed in the opening lines of poem #14 of "Chants Democratic and Native American," which first appeared in the 1860 Leaves of Grass. The lines eventually became part of the independent poem "Poets to Come."
  • Related Item(s):
    • A series of draft lines are written on the back of this manuscript leaf. See uva.00272.
    • See wwa.00060.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "21"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Merely What I tell is." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00271.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] 21 ^Merely What I tell is not to justify me, What I provoke from you, and from the  
  times ensuing times, is to justify me.—   [begin leaf 1 verso]
Back to top