The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Ah, not this granite dead and cold
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: February 1885
Whitman Archive ID: pml.00001
Source: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 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: "Ah, Not This Granite Dead and Cold" was published first on February 22, 1885, in the Philadelphia Press. The poem was ultimately titled "Washington's Monument, February 22, 1885." This manuscript was probably written in February 1885, shortly before the poem was published. The verso image of this manuscript is currently unavailable.
Contributors to digital file: Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, Nicole Gray, Nick Krauter, and Amanda Gailey
[begin leaf 1 recto] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/pml.00001.001.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/pml.00001.001.jpg)
Beyond this Ah, not this granite dead and cold.
Beyond this Ah not theis granite dead and cold,
Far,
far
far
from this
base and shaft expanding—the
round zones circling, comprehending,
No lurid fame exceptional, nor monstrous intellect, nor conquest's dominations c
Thou, Washington, aret
^all the world's,
humanity's
freedom's
Freedom's, Law's, —not yours alone,
America
Thy fame, (no lurid fame exceptional,
for the norintellect, nor conquest's domination,)
By deathless waves of emanation the race's
common ownership,
Europe's,
^as well, in castle or in
cot laborer's cot—the
Arab's in his tent—the African's,
Old Asia's there with venerable smile seated
amid the past,
(Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the
same—the eternal heart and arm—the
heir legitimate
Courage, alertness, patience, hope, the same—
e'en in defeat defeated not, the same;)
No lurid fame exceptional, nor monstrous intellect, nor conquest's domination;)
Through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out,
factories or farms,
Where'er ship sails, or house is built on land,
or night or day,
Now, or to come, or past—where patriot
bra wills existed or exist
Wherever Freedom, pois'd by toleration, sway'd by Law,
Rising or risen, of thee are monuments there are is thy monumentst.