is wider than the west | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: is wider than the west
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00510
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
Date: Before or early in 1855
Genre: poetry, prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: This draft fragment includes phrases and poetic lines that were revised and used in different editions of Leaves of Grass . "The orbed opening of whose mouth," struck through on this manuscript, is suggestive of a line that appeared in 1855 in the poem ultimately called "Song of Myself": "The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full." The line "Nature is rude at first—but once begun never tires" was used slightly altered in "Song of the Open Road," first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass under the title "Poem of the Road." Edward Grier, drawing from Richard Maurice Bucke's Notes and Fragments (1899), adds a bracketed conclusion to the last line: "Most works of art [tire. Only the Great Chef d'OEuvres never tire and never dazzle at first.]" ( Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:168). The line does not currently appear on the manuscript. On the reverse of this manuscript is a prose fragment on the subject of knowledge and learning (nyp.00024).