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I must not deceive you

About This Item

  • Title: I must not deceive you
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00560
  • 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: This manuscript was probably written between 1850 and 1860. The lines were used in the poem "To One Shortly to Die," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.
  • Related Item(s):
    • Draft lines on the back of this leaf appeared with revisions in the first poem of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself." See uva.00280.
    • See wwa.00057.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "27"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "I must not deceive you." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00560.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] 27 I do ^must not deceive you—you are to die, I am melancholy and stern, but I love you— 
  there is no escape for you.— I do not know your destination, but I know 
  it is real and perfect.   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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