Poetry Manuscripts

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[Leaf 1 recto]

After death.
Others hold levee in life,— ^ After death ^ Now ^ when I am looked back upon, I will I hold
        I levee, after death,
I lean on my left elbow—I
        take ten thousand lovers, one
        after another, by my right hand.—
 
[Leaf 1 verso]    

[I have all lives]

I have all lives, all effects, all
        causes, all germes, invisibly
        hidden in myself,
[Begin hashmark section]
This is the earth's word—the round
        and compact earth's,
I and the earth th truth are one, we are
        curiously welded,
[End hashmark section]
Date
This manuscript was probably written in the mid-1850s.
Editorial note
"After Death" was never published in Whitman's lifetime. "[I have all lives]" is likely related to the poem first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass as "Poem of The Sayers of The Words of The Earth" and ultimately entitled "A Song of the Rolling Earth."
Location
After death  |  Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.
Whitman Archive ID
uva.00133

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