My Canary Bird a machine readable transcription Walt Whitman Susan Belasco Elizabeth Lorang Ed Folsom Kenneth M. Price Transcription and encoding Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Susan Belasco Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln University of Iowa National Endowment for the Humanities 2014 The Walt Whitman Archive
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities 319 Love Library University of Nebraska-Lincoln P.O. Box 884100 Lincoln, NE 68588-4100

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 per.00117 My Canary Bird <ref target="per.00104">New York Herald</ref> 2 March 1888 6 Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of the original updated TEI header converted to P5 proofread Added editorial note. transcribed and encoded MY CANARY BIRD.Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD: Did we count great, O soul to penetrate the themes of mighty books, Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations? But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel the joyous warble Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon, Is it not just as great, O soul?This poem is likely the one Whitman mentions in a letter to Richard Maurice Bucke on February 16, 1888: "it is chilly here as I finish this—my little bird sits hunch'd up in a lump, & sings not—but spring weather is coming & early summer & I will write a little poem ab't it to warm me up." For the full letter, see Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., The Correspondence (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 4: 151. WALT WHITMAN.