University of Virginia Library

Richard Bucke, Notes and Fragments (1899), p. 57; see also Camden Edition (1902), IX, 6.

Rollo Silver, "Seven Letters of Walt Whitman," American Literature, VII (1935), 76-78.

An earlier version of this poem is preserved on the verso of a leaf of one of the late additions to "Premonition" i.e. "Proto-Leaf." The final three verses in the present manuscript were revised on a paste-over slip. These and similar details will be presented complete in the edited text of these manuscripts.

This number VIII is a revision, written above an original IX. Whether this was an inadvertent mistake, or a reflection of an earlier numbering system, is not certain. However, from the tip of the IX of the next poem found on the bottom cut-off of the last leaf here, it is clear that there has been no misplacement and that the intention was to copy this in the notebook as VIII. In the right-hand portion of the text of the second verse is the erased pencil note "(finished, in / the other city)" in Whitman's hand. Owing to the position, however, this reference could possibly apply to the end of poem VII.

In truth, the difference in the form of the manuscript may have some significance, but the lack of numbering could have none. Most of the 1859-composed poems are not numbered, though some have foliation to indicate that some arrangement(s) had been essayed.