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To the year 1889

About This Item

  • Title: To the year 1889
  • Date: Late 1888 or very early 1889
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: yal.00007
  • 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: "To the Year 1889" was published first on January 5, 1889, in the Critic. The poem was later retitled "To the Pending Year." This manuscript was probably written near the end of 1888 or in the first few days of 1889, shortly before the poem was published.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "To the year 1889." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: yal.00007.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] vs 553

To the year 1889.

Have I no ^weapon‑word for thee—some message brief  
 and fierce? Have I fought out ^and done indeed the battle? wholly? is  
 there no shot left, For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, ^manifold silliness? Nor for myself—my own rebellious self [illegible] in thee? # two leads Down, down, proud gorge—tho' choking thee, Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the  
 gutter, Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts. Walt Whitman   [begin leaf 1 verso] Sky $25.— 65.
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