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Search : of captain, my captain!
Section : Literary Manuscripts
Year : 1855

68 results

You villain, Touch

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

the breath is leaving my throat; ! Open your floodgates!

I am faintish I can contain resist you no longer think I shall drop sink , Take drops the tears of my

¶Little as your mouth yo lips are am faintish I am faintish; and it has drained me dry of my strength

Annotations Text:

. . . . my breath is tight in its throat; / Unclench your floodgates!

You there

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Open your mouth gums my pardy, that I put send blow grit in you with one a breath ; Spread your palms

you know how

  • Date: 1855 or before
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

. * shall uncage in my breast a thousand armed great winged broad‑ wide‑winged strengths and unknown

I want that untied tenor, clean and fresh as the Creation, whose vast pure volume floods my soul.

paces and powers, uncage in my heart a thousand new strengths, and unknown ardors and terrible —making

furious than hail hail and lightning. that leap lulling me drowsily with honeyed uncaging waking in my

likely relates to the following lines, from the poem that would be titled "Song of Myself": "I open my

Will you have the walls

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Annotations Text:

See in particular: "And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own, / And I know that the

spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own" (1855, p. 15–16).; Transcribed from digital images of

The wild gander leads his

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate

What is nearest and commonest and nearest and cheapest and easiest is Me, Me going in for my chances,

myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to receive my

[Why should I be afraid]

  • Date: 1855-1892
Text:

Glance O'er Travel'd Roads first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine (January 1887), under the title My

Reprinted in Democratic Vistas, and Other Papers (1888), My Book and I was also combined with How I Made

a Book, Philadelphia Press (11 July 1889) and A Backward Glance on My Own Road, Critic (5 January 1884

Who knows that I shall

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Annotations Text:

of Grass, eventually titled "Song of Myself": "The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my

Whatever I say of myself

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Annotations Text:

manuscript appeared as the following, in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself": "All I mark as my

were paid for with steamships

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Because I am in my place what of that? The perfect male and female are everywhere in their place.

Annotations Text:

the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, later titled "Song of Myself": "I resist anything better than my

own diversity, / And breathe the air and leave plenty after me, / And am not stuck up, and am in my

Topple down upon him

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

for I am you seem to me all one lurid Curse oath curse; I look down off the river with my bloodshot eyes

, after 10 I see the steamboat that carries away my woman.— Damn him!

how he does defile me This day, or some other, I will have him and the like of him to curse the do my

I will stop the drag them out—the sweet marches of heaven shall be stopped my maledictions.— Whitman

Annotations Text:

how he does defile me, / How he informs against my brother and sister and takes pay for their blood,

/ How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat that carries away my woman" (1855, p. 74

To be at all

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

thousands, each one with his entry to himself; They are always watching with their little eyes, from my

head to my feet.

lift put the girder of the earth a globe the house away if it lay between me and whatever I wanted.— My

There can be nothing small

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

senses all men is truth; Logic and sermons never convince ; me; The dew of the night drives deep er into my

Annotations Text:

/ Logic and sermons never convince, / The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. / Only what proves

"Summer Duck"

  • Date: Between 1852 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

": "My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble, / They rise together

these lines may relate to the following line in the poem ultimately titled "Song of Myself": "I take my

To the Poor— I have my place among you Is it nothing that I have preferred to be poor, rather than to

The spotted hawk salutes the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

He swoops by me, and rebukes me hoarse ly with his invitation; He complains with sarcastic voice of my

Annotations Text:

roughs, a kosmos" (1855, p. 29) and "The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me . . . . he complains of my

gab and my loitering. / I too am not a bit tamed . . . .

The sores on my shoulders

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

11 He The sores on my neck shoulders are from his iron necklace I look on the off on the river with my

bloodshot eyes He stops the steamboat and till she will paddle off with away take my woman, and paddle

The sores on my shoulders

Annotations Text:

titled "The Sleepers": "How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat that carries away my

Remember that the clock and

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

to an "Elder Brother" is reminescent of lines "And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my

own, / And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own" (15—16).

Annotations Text:

to an "Elder Brother" is reminescent of lines "And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my

own, / And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own" (15—16).

is reminiscent of lines from the poem that read "And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my

own, / And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own" (1855, pp. 15–16).; Transcribed

The regular old followers

  • Date: Between 1853 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

to the President at his levee, / And he says Good day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugarfield

of the poem (not including this line) were revised and published in The American in October 1880 as "My

Priests

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Until you can explain a paving stone, to every ones my perfect satisfaction O Priests , do not try to

Annotations Text:

. / I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women" (1855, p. 64).;

See in particular the lines: "The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my time to be one

Poem incarnating the mind

  • Date: Before 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

See particularly the following lines (from the 1891–2 edition): "O the old manhood of me, my noblest

/ My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard, / My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of

the long stretch of my life" (145).

His blood My gore presently oozes from trickles down from a score of thinned with the plentiful sweat

salt ooze of my skin , And See how it as trickles down the black skin I slowly fall s on the reddened

Annotations Text:

Grier notes that a portion of this notebook (beginning "How spied the captain and sailors") describes

Outdoors is the best antiseptic

  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Clean er shaved and more grammatical folks I call Mister, and lay the tips of my fingers inside their

headline in the morning papers, and pass the time as comfortably as the law allows.— But for the others, my

[O Earth, my likeness]

  • Date: 1860
Text:

27O Earth, My Likeness (1860).

A.MS. draft.loc.00225xxx.00099[O Earth, my likeness]1860poetryhandwritten1 leaf20.5 x 16 cm; A draft

of the poem first published as Calamus, No. 36 in 1860 (Earth, My Likeness in the final version of Leaves

[O Earth, my likeness]

No doubt the efflux

  • Date: Before 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

/ Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sun-light expands my blood?

/ Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

blood—that if I walk with an arm of theirs around my neck, my soul leaps and laughs like a new-waked

—(Am I loved by them boundlessly because my love for them is more boundless?

truth, my sympathy, and my dignity.

Night of south winds

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Still Night of Sleep—my bridal Night!

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds purer and clearer for my sake!

The Nibelungen

  • Date: 1855-1865
Text:

The poem is one of the thiry-one poems included in Second Annex--Good-Bye My Fancy, 1891–1892.

myself to celebrate

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

.— I celebrate myself to celebrate you; every man and woman alive; I transpose my my spirit I pass as

that hear me; I am loosen the voice tongue that was tied in you them In me It begins to talk out of my

My tongue can never be

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

204 My tongue must can never be content with pap harness from this after this, It c will not talk m in

My tongue can never be

Annotations Text:

harness," "traces," "the bit"—may relate to the extended metaphor developed in following lines: "Deluding my

bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me, / No consideration, no regard for my

draining strength or my anger, / Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile, / Then all

My Spirit sped back to

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

My Soul Spirit was curious and sped back to the beginning, sped back returned to the times when the earth

eternally; And devise themselves to this spot place These States and this hour, Again But yet still my

My Spirit sped back to

My hand will not hurt

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

7 196 My touch hand will not hurt what it holds, and yet will devour it, That It must remain whole perfect

Only one minute, only two or three passing bulging sheathed touches, Yet they gather all of me and my

spirit into a knot, They hold us so long enough there, to show us what life we can be,— And that my

senses and our flesh, and even a part of flesh, is seems more than all life.— What has become of my senses

My hand will not hurt

Loveblows

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

— Bloss Branched Le Verdure , blossom branch , fruit and vine The irregular tapping of rain off the my

Lofty sirs

  • Date: Between 1840 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

.— I assume this day, the whole debt of all I take my place by right among the sudorous or sweaty men

a handsomer man with be has better finer health and cleaner shaped limbs than I, who do business in my

Living Pictures

  • Date: Before 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Annotations Text:

The first several lines of the poem were published in 1880 as "My Picture-Gallery.

left with Andrew

  • Date: 1854 or 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

lines 40 letters 1120 1120 letters in page of Skakspere Shakespeare 's poems 1600 letters in one of my

sauntering the pavement, 9 great are the myths, I wander all night 10 Come closer to me Who learns my

It is no miracle now

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Henceforth After this day, A touch shall henceforth be small Little things is shall be are henceforth my

my tongue proof and argument It They shall tell s for me that people In them, the smallest least of

over all, and what we thought death is but life brought to a finer parturition.— An inch's contact My

Annotations Text:

The clearest relation is to the line: "A minute and a drop of me settle my brain" (1855, p. 33), but

Inscription

  • Date: between 1855 and 1867
Text:

In the 1888 November Boughs, however, Whitman reprinted the 1867 version as Small the Theme of my Chant

manuscript draft may have been written before the Civil War, since it does not include the 1867 line "My

In the course of the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Text:

pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . . . . and am not contained between my

In the course of the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Have I hasten to inform you it is just as good to die, and I know it; I know it For I take my death with

the dying, And my birth with the new-washed babe Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early

Annotations Text:

pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . . . . and am not contained between my

In metaphysical points

  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

These words are for the five or six grand poets, too; and the masters of artists: — I waste no ink, nor my

Annotations Text:

receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you, / The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my

In his presence

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, my tap is death" (1855, p. 74).

man who claims or takes the power to own another man as his property, stabs me in that the heart of my

own The one scratches me a little on the cheek forehead , the other draws his murderous razor through my

t T hat black and huge lethargic mass, my sportsmen, dull and sleepy as it seems, has holds the lightning

eventually titled "Song of Myself": "Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai, / In my

I think I could dash

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

.— what my touch wanted any thing whatever I wanted.— Surely I am out of my head!

I am lost to myself and someth something else Nature in another form has laid down in my place.

I know many beautiful things

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

night walkers And do no better for me— Who am a regular gentlemen or lady, With a marble broad stoop to my

And is the day here when I vote at the polls, One with the immigrant that last August strewed lime in my

I know as well as

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

Bibles i are divine revelations of God But I know say that any each leaf of grass and every hair of my

compiled composed is not august enough to dent endow answer tally a leaf of grass the partition of in my

Annotations Text:

. / I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women" (1855, p. 64).;

I entertain all the aches

  • Date: Before or early in 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

I entertain all the aches of the human heart Outside the asteroids I reconnoitre at my ease.

Annotations Text:

Compare these lines from that edition: "I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer

I cannot guess what the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Annotations Text:

The Great Laws do not" also includes draft lines that appeared in the poem later titled "Who Learns My

I am that half grown

  • Date: Before 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

am that foolish half grown angry boy, fallen asleep, The tears of foolish passion yet undried upon my

I am become the poet

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

19 I am become the poet of babes and the little things I descend many steps—I go backward primeval My

equanimous arms feet 209 I surround retrace things steps oceanic—I pass to around not merely my own

Annotations Text:

. / My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, / On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches

I am become a shroud

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

The retrospective extasy ecstasy is upon me— I am now my soul —spirit burns volcanic The earth recedes

ashamed before my prophetical crisis.— Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as

Annotations Text:

similar to the following line in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself": "The dirt receding before my

I am a curse

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

—I lend you my own mouth tongue A black I dart ed like a snake from his mouth.— I My eyes are bloodshot

, they look down the river, A steamboat carries off paddles away my woman and children.— Around my neck

am T The His i ron necklace and the red sores of my shoulders I do not feel mind , h H opples and ball

ankles and tight cuffs at the wrists does must not detain me will go down the river, with the sight of my

bloodshot eyes, go in to the steamboat that paddles off wife woman and child A I do not stop with my

Annotations Text:

. / How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat that carries away my woman"(1855, p.

How gladly we leave the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

eventually titled "Song of Myself": "The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me, / I tucked my

trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time."

and wicked" may relate to the following line, which occurs later in the same poem: "Ever myself and my

Annotations Text:

eventually titled "Song of Myself": "The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me, / I tucked my

trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time."

and wicked" may relate to the following line, which occurs later in the same poem: "Ever myself and my

trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time" (1855, p. 18).

and wicked" may relate to the following line, which occurs later in the same poem: "Ever myself and my

hands are cut by the

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

when I visited the Asylum and they showed me their most smeared and slobbering idiot, Yet I knew for my

for my consolation, of the great laws that emptied and broke my my brother s Whitman probably drafted

halt in the shade

  • Date: Between 1850 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Text:

.— wood-duck on my distan le around. purposes, nd white playing within me the tufted crown intentional

Annotations Text:

/ It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. / My tread scares the wood-drake and

wood-duck on my distant and daylong ramble, / They rise together, they slowly circle around. / . . .

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