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As in a Swoon

About This Item

  • Title: As in a Swoon
  • Date: Between 1872 and 1876
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: yal.00004
  • Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 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: "As in a Swoon" was published first in the 1876 printing of Leaves of Grass. Though the poem was not included in any subsequent editions of Leaves, Whitman did include it in the 1891 volume Good-Bye My Fancy and as one of the few poems in the 1892 volume Complete Prose Works. Whitman likely wrote this manuscript between 1872 and 1876, after the publication of the 1872 edition of Leaves of Grass and before the poem's publication in the 1876 edition.
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in Horace Traubel's hand: "see notes April 9 1891"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "As in a Swoon." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: yal.00004.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] see notes April 9 1891

As in a Swoon.

As in a swoon, one instant, Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles  
 me, And all the orbs I knew, with  
 brighter, unknown orbs, ^ten thousand fold, One instant of the future land—  
  Heeaven's​ land. Is this pub'd? is it in L of G—or annex?   [begin leaf 1 verso] 56. —5¾—
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