The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Yet far sweeps your road
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: 1864
Whitman Archive ID: hpl.00001
Source: Huntington Public Library, Huntington, New York. 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 is a draft of the poem eventually titled "Thick-Sprinkled Bunting," first published under the title "Flag of stars, thick-sprinkled bunting" in Drum-Taps in 1865. The manuscript was likely written in 1864.
Related item: On the back of this leaf is a letter draft from around 26–29 (?) December 1864, apparently to the editor of the New York Herald, asking that an accompanying "communication," now lost, be printed "to start a public demand for the general exchange of prisoners of war." See hpl.00003.
Contributors to digital file: Katrina Robertson, Nick Krauter, Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, and Brett Barney
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^
Yet far sweeps your road path, O
O your path stretches
far
Martial constellation!
far sweeps your
stretches far your
journey
ever adding group!
journey!
For
O
the prize I see at issue is the
world;
All its ships and shores I see
interwoven with your threads,
spotted
cloth
flag;
Dream'd again the flags of kings,
highest borne, to
wave
waft
fly
flaunt
unrivall'd?
O
destined
hasten
blue and silver! O with sure and
steady step, passing highest flags
of kings.
Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty
symbol—run up above them
all,
Dense starr'd bunting
O your path stretches far, martial
O to find your lazy seams, they
can turn and flap for carnage
O far, long, long your road,
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