The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Marginalia
About this Item
Title: Poem
Creator: Walt Whitman
Annotation Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00258
Source: The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the marginalia and annotations, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial Note: This manuscript features notes for a poem about night "visions," possibly related to the fourth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, eventually titled "The Sleepers." Fragments of an unidentified newspaper clipping about the Puget Sound area have been pasted to the leaf.
Contributors to digital file: Melody S. Han, Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Nicole Gray, and Brett Barney
Key
| Whitman's Hand | | Highlighting | | Paste-on | | Laid in | | Erasure | | Overwrite |
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Poem
———
As in Visions of — — at
night—
All sorts of fancies running through
the head
2
Spring has just set in here, and the weather is truly delightful. We have the biggest pond (Puget Sound) and the finest fish in the world. They are so abundant, and the waters so placid, that the Indians spear instead of hook them. All night long one can see them shooting across the water in their canoes, and bearing aloft their torches. They usually manage to load down their boats with salmon, codfish and flounders, till the night gives place to day. Although the narrowest part of the Sound in this vicinity is four miles, and the widest ten, days succeed days without a ripple disturbing its broad expanse, save when made by the paddle-wheels of a steamer.3
2
"The shores on either side of the Sound are skirted with dense timber, and on the tops are to be seen the eyrie of the eagle. At a distance of fifty miles the coast range of mountains are distinctly visible. These are covered with perpetual snow."Balls and parties are of frequent occurrence. When one is given, the "rural districts" are well represented. Married couples think nothing of riding in on horseback, with infants in their arms, through heavy rains, distances of five or ten miles. From fifty to one hundred couple may be seen at a single ball. The In-[cut away]
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