Poetry Manuscripts

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It The greatest thing is to make a nation's poems.—
The grand true making of the Poems of a nation would combine all those that has belongs to the Iliad of Homer and the Jewish Hebrew Canticles called the Bible, and of S k h akespear's delineation of feudal heroism and personality and would carry all the influences of both and all that branches from them for thousands of years.—
Date
The date of composition is unknown. It seems likely that this manunscript was written in1859 or later.
Editorial note
This manuscript was left unpublished in Whitman's lifetime. The key ideas presented here—stressing the epic scope and biblical ambition of Leaves of Grass—are encountered in many places in his writings. See, for example, his discussion of "The Great Construction of the New Bible" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 1: 353) and the front matter of the Blue Book, which compares the length of Leaves to a variety of epics and the Bible.
The verso of the manuscript leaf is blank.
Location
Poems of a Nation  |  The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Whitman Archive ID
loc.00169

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