The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Can ? make me
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
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 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: Poetic lines on the back of this leaf relate to the poem eventually titled "Faces." See uva.00562.
Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "22"
Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney, Nicole Gray, and Heather Morton
[begin leaf 1 recto] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00273.001.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00273.001.jpg)
Can ? make me so exuberant yet so faintish?
The rage of an unconquerable fierceness is
conquered by the touch
tenderest hand
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] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00273.002.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00273.002.jpg)