Superb and infinitely manifold as

Whitman Archive Title: Superb and infinitely manifold as
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00063
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
Repository Title: Holograph notes for lectures and poems; 12 notes written on 14 pieces of paper, unsigned, undated.
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass . The discussion of the vastness of time and space is similar to a passage from the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The manuscript includes the phrase "countless octillions of the cubic leagues of space," while a phrase from the version of the poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass reads "a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span" (51). Whether or not this manuscript contributed directly to the poem, the similarity suggests that the manuscript was written before or early in 1855. Edward Grier includes two additional sentences in his transcription of this manuscript that are taken from Richard Maurice Bucke's Notes and Fragments (see Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:161). However, the source of Bucke's transcription have not been found and there is no evidence that the sentences were ever associated with the present manuscript.