About this Item

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.