Title: A Prairie Sunset
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Early 1888
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00167
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: "A Prairie Sunset" was published first in the March 9, 1888 issue of the New York Herald. This manuscript was probably composed in early 1888, shortly before the poem's publication.
Contributors to digital file: Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, Lisa Renfro, Nick Krauter, Heather Morton, and Nicole Gray
sent to Herald March 2
A Prairie sunset.
Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver,
emerald, fawn,
The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's
multiform power consigned for once
to colors
The ^light, the very air
diffused in
possess'd by
them,—colors till now
unknown
No limits, confines—not the western, the
sky
alone—the high meridian—north,
south, all,
Pure, ^varied, brilliant
colors,
varied, fused and
brilliant,
fighting the
silent, shadows to
the last.