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In the gymnasium

About This Item

  • Title: In the gymnasium
  • Date: Between 1850 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: yal.00452
  • 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: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early to mid-1850s. Versions of these lines appeared in a long manuscript poem titled "Pictures," which probably dates to the mid- to late 1850s. The first several lines of "Pictures" (not including these lines) were eventually revised and published as "My Picture-Gallery" in The American in October 1880. The poem was later published in Leaves of Grass as part of the "Autumn Rivulets" cluster.
  • Related Item(s):
    • Poetic lines drafted on the back of this manuscript leaf likely contributed to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." See yal.00483.
    • See wwa.00582.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "In the gymnasium." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: yal.00452.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] In the gymnasium, leaping and lifting from In Listening [illegible] in Far ago Li the classic market place—O divine 
  tongue, I ^too am silent under your elenchus! O bare feet, O bulging paunch, I will saunter 
  along with you! Sauntering in the [illegible] Seeking Arguing with And For And here arguing the questioner of and in the classical time ^—Socrates in ^after the questioner in in the market place ; arguing with Socrates (O divine tongue! I too am grow silent under your elenchus! O bare feet! O bulging paunch belly! I saunter along ^by you and listen) 
  only;).— out   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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