The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: City of my walks and joys
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Late 1850s
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00023
Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. 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 the poem first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass as number 18 in the "Calamus" cluster and ultimately entitled "City of Orgies." The manuscript was probably written in the late 1850s.
Related item: On the back of this leaf is a draft of a poem published first in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass as number 1 in the cluster "Enfans d'Adam." See uva.00583.
Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in Fredson Bowers's hand: "Calamus 18. p 363"
Contributors to digital file: Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, Zach Bajaber, Brian Pytlik Zillig, Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, and Brett Barney
[begin leaf 1 recto] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00023.001.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00023.001.jpg)
City of my walks and joys!
City whom that I have lived
and sung there will one day
make you illustrious!
Not the infinite pageants of
you—Not your shifting
tableaux, your spectacles,
repay me
Not the interminable rows of
your houses—notr
the
ships at the wharves,
[begin pasted-over section]
Manhattan[!?] little you h [cut away]
You
[illegible] city[:?] what
do y[cut away]
you repay me for my
daily walks joys
Not
these
your
crowded rows of houses silen
attract
repay
me
[illegible] Not the bright windows
[and
or?]
the goods in them, or the
processions in the street
[end pasted-over section]
I
^Notr to
converse with
educated and
eminent
learned
fashionable
^learned
persons, or bear
my share in the
soiree, or
feast, or discu in politics,
But as I pass, the ^frequent
and swift flash
of eyes,
speaking
offering
offering
me
delicious
[illegible] athletic
love fresh as nature's air and
herbage— —offering me
full repa the ^respondsse and equal of
my my own,
These repay me—Lovers, ^continual Lovers
continu only repay me.—
[begin leaf 1 verso] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
![[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00023.002.jpg]](https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00023.002.jpg)