Title: halt in the shade
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00561
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 composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The manuscript fragments of poetry are partial drafts of lines used in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
Related item: Lines written on the back of this manuscript are similar in idea to lines in the poem "To One Shortly to Die," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. See uva.00278.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray and Heather Morton
[cut away]ueing,!
[cut away]nding,!
[cut away] halt in the shade,
[cut away] in your eyes oxen?
[cut away] all the print I
[cut away] [li?]fe.—
[cut away] wood-duck on my distan[cut away]
[cut away]le around.
[cut away] purposes,
[cut away]nd white playing within me [cut away]
[cut away] the tufted crown intentional[cut away]
[cut away] because he reads no newspaper [is?] is not something else
[cut away] passes any statue, studied the gamut, yet t[cut away]
[cut away] silliness out of [cut away]