The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Notes where wild bees flitting hum
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: About 1880
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00111
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from The Walt Whitman Archive I: Whitman Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1993), 2:624; and Major American Authors on CD-Rom: Walt Whitman (Westport, CT: Primary Source Media, 1997). The transcription was then checked against 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 likely written around 1880 as Whitman was drafting the poem "A Clear Midnight," first published in Leaves of Grass in 1881. The manuscript consists of two drafts of lines unpublished in Whitman's life, but which appeared in other manuscript drafts with lines that were published as "A Clear Midnight." The lines that appear in this manuscript were published posthumously as part of a poem titled "Supplement Hours." In 1897, five years after Whitman's death, his literary executors added a group of poems entitled "Old Age Echoes" to a new printing of Leaves of Grass, and "Supplement Hours" was a part of this group.
Contributors to digital file: Janel Cayer, Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, Zane Zimbelman, Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, and Brett Barney
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Notes where the wild bees flitting hums
Or the
August
silent
mMulleins grow . . . . or [illegible] winter
Snow flakes fall . . .
While the ever the far off Stars ^of heaven roll round and round . . .
Where the As Notes as the wild bBees flitting hum . . .
As
Or
August
mMulleins grow ...
as
or
winter Snow-flakes
silent fall . . .
Ans Or the Stars in the sky roll round . . .
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