The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: clearing the way
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00566
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. It is a draft of lines that appear in the sixth poem in that edition, eventually titled "Faces."
Related item: Lines on the back of this manuscript leaf relate to the poem eventually titled "The Sleepers." See uva.00258.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray and Kenneth M. Price
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[cut away]
clearing the way.—
I h Faintly through ^above the roar I clearly hear the
[illegible] the clear tutti of the victorious horns.— triumphal music drums.
I hear They I catch
I already catch the tutti of
———
I stand at the top of the street,
I know the great procession is coming,
I see ^ far off through the dust the towering caps of pioneers, ^from ^off through the [cut away]
I see the gilt tipt staves of policemen—clearing
the way,
Above the [th?] roar, I hear the the clear tutti of
victorious horns.—
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