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Poetry Manuscripts

Table of Contents

[Leaf 1 recto]

[Begin hashmark section]

Great are you, You lusty and loving graceflu youth! but

you are great

you are not exclusively great, in youth.— graceful

and fascinating youth;

Your Middle age [comes?] shall be great with its amplitude

and [about three letters illegible] steadiness and ma

allmastering the fullblooded strength

Your old age [come with?] shall be equally great shall have with

resistless majesty and bloom and

fascination and love,

[End hashmark section]

Date: This manuscript was likely written between 1850 and 1855 when Whitman was composing his first edition of Leaves of Grass.

Editorial note: The manuscript on the recto of the leaf is a partial draft of the final poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately entitled "Great Are the Myths." The lines on the verso of the leaf are suggestive of lines from an untitled poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, ultimately called "To Think of Time."

Location: [You lusty and graceflu youth!] MS 4 to 11 | The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.

The Walt Whitman Archive