The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: And to me each minute
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: tex.00057
Source: The Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. 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: Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The manuscript includes lines that relate to the prose preface and to several of the poems in that edition, including the poems eventually titled "Song of Myself," "To Think of Time," and "A Song for Occupations." The manuscript also includes lines that relate to the manuscript poem "Pictures," which probably dates to the mid- to late 1850s.
Related item: Notes about the arrangement and production of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass are written on the back of this manuscript. See tex.00001.
Contributors to digital file: Caitlin Henry, Nicole Gray, Stacey Provan, and Ken Price
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25
And to me each minute of the night and day is chock with something as vital and visible
vital live as flesh is
And I say the stars are not echoes
And I perceive that the salt marsh sea sedgy weed has delicious refreshing odors;
And potatoes and milk afford a fat breakfast dinner of state,;
And I dare not say the guess the chipping bird bay mare mocking bird is less than I sings as well as I,
because although she reads no newspaper; never learned the gamut;
And to shake my friendly right hand governors
and millionaires shall stand all day,
waiting their turns.—
And on to me each acre of the earth land and sea, I behold exhibits to me
perpetual ^ unending marvellous pictures;
They fill the worm‑fence, and lie on the heaped stones,
and are hooked to the elder and poke‑weed;
And to me each every minute of the night and day is filled with a [live?] joy
And ^to me the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses is an a
every statue ^perfect and plumb;
[cut away] grouped [cut away]
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