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Poetry Manuscripts

Table of Contents

leaf 1 recto

(Returning to my pages' front once

more, resuming all,

Songs, sorrows, tragedies, with stalwart

joys—O heaven!

The passionate, teeming play this curtain

hid!)

A glance look —a flashing token of my‑

self—to future time.

I launch to To y Y ou, whoe'er you

are, I launch, through space

revolving,

These burin'd eyes—this head & globe face .

These convolutions, miniature of all

Date: This manuscript was probably written in the early to mid-1870s, after the creation of the photograph upon which "Out from Behind This Mask" is based and before publication of the poem in 1876.

Editorial note: This manuscript is a draft of lines in "Out from Behind This Mask," a poem published first in the New York Tribune, February 19, 1876.; The verso of the manuscript leaf is blank.

Location: Out from behind this mask | The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

The Walt Whitman Archive