Content:
The original title was "Leaflet." On the second page Whitman added, in a combination of normal
and blue pencil, the number 43 (1/2). With the addition of a new first line ("1.
Who is now reading this?") the poem became section 16 of "Calamus" in 1860; the
lines on the first draft page correspond to verses 2-8 and those on the second
page ("Or as if interior in me") to verses 9-10. This was the first and last
appearance of the poem during Whitman's lifetime: he rejected it from his "Blue Book Copy" of
Leaves of Grass
in 1860.
