The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Life and Death
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: 1888
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00213
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 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 is a draft of "Life and Death," which was published first in the New York Herald on May 23, 1888. The manuscript was probably written in the spring of 1888, shortly before the poem was published.
Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 verso, in unknown hand: "ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF A POEM BY WALT WHITMAN"
Contributors to digital file: Nick Krauter, Melody S. Han, Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, and Brett Barney
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sent H May 19
pub'd
Life and Death
The two old ^simple problems ever
For eEver intertwined
For
By
[illegible]
each successive age pass'd on
insoluble, pass'd on,
To ours to-day—and we pass on. the same
^Close home, Elusive, simple, present, baffled, grappled, foil'd baffled,
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