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Can ? make me

About This Item

  • Title: Can ? make me
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00273
  • 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 lines bear some similarity to lines in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Poetic lines on the back of this leaf relate to the poem eventually titled "Faces." See uva.00562.
    • See wwa.00059.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "22"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Can ? make me." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00273.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] Can ? make me so exuberant yet so faintish? The rage of an unconquerable fierceness is conquered by the touch 
  tenderest hand 22 I do not think I am ^cannot be awake, for nothing looks 
  or feels to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, 
  and all before has been a mean sleep.   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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