The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: The three or four poets
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Whitman Archive ID: tul.00002
Source: Walt Whitman Ephemera, University of Tulsa. 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 features draft lines of the third poem in that edition, eventually titled "To Think of Time."
Related item: On the back of this leaf are notes toward a poem about "a perfect school." See tul.00011.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray, Andy Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, and Katrina Robertson
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The
great
three or four
poets ^ of the stretch of the are well . . . . the wellknown
names of leaders and inventors . . . .
the rich owners and the ^pious
and distinguished; —may be well,
?
But what
are
of
all the rest?—Are
Is
there
none of account but ^of poets and the distinguished
and
the
[illegible]
the
owners ^and pious?
?
Are the ignorant and wicked nothing?
Are the interminable
races
hordes
of Asia and
Africa nothing
Are the [illegible]
common people of Europe
and America nothing?
Are the American aborigines and the [neg?] nothing?
Are Is
the
a
zZambo
and the
or a
^foreheadless
cCrowfoot
or
the
a
Camanche
nothing?
Is
the
a
wretched
young
polluted
man,
thievish,
—a thief,
uneducated, polluted, rank, swiftly
dying with the
polluting
rank
sickness, nothing?
Is the
Are the
infected in the immigrant
hospital nothing?
Are the perpetual successions of
shallow persons and frivolous persons nothing?
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![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/tul.00002.002.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/tul.00002.002.jpg)