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Whatever I say of myself

About This Item

  • Title: Whatever I say of myself
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: uva.00568
  • 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: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Lines from the manuscript appear in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself."
  • Related Item(s):
    • Poetic lines on the back of this manuscript leaf also relate to poems in the 1855 Leaves of Grass. See uva.00251.
    • See wwa.00072.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Whatever I say of myself." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: uva.00568.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] [cut away] Whatever I say of myself, you shall apply to yourself If you do not, it is were [illegible] time lost listening to me. I think there will never be any more heaven or hell 
  than there is now, TNor any more youth nor age than there is now [cut away] Nor any more inception than there is now, Nor any more perfection than there is now.   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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