The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: This is the Earths word
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: About 1856
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00019
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This manuscript was probably written in the mid-1850s. Some of the ideas expressed in this manuscript thematically relate to Whitman's poem "A Song of the Rolling Earth," which was published first in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass as "Poem of The Sayers of The Words of The Earth."
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth M. Price, Brett Barney, Nick Krauter, and Zach Bajaber
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[illegible]
—This is the Earths word—
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the pervading sentiment or lesson is to be that the only good of learning the theory and of the fluency largeness, exa and generosity and unpartiality, largeness and exactitude of the earth is to use all those toward ^the theory of character—human character
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