Title: Who wills with his own
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00283
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: This manuscript is distantly similar in topic and wording to language in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass, suggesting the manuscript may have been written in the early to mid-1850s. In his transcription, Richard Maurice Bucke combines it with three other manuscripts: see nyp.00095, nyp.00097, and uva.00134 (Notes and Fragments [London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899], 28–29). Though the subject matter is similar, the manuscripts do not appear to be continuous.
Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "30"
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray and Joshua Ranger
Who wills with his own brain,
the
good
sweet
of the float of the earth
descends and surrounds him,
If
he
you
be a laborer or apprentice or
solitary farmer, it is the same.