In Whitman's Hand

Manuscripts

About this Item

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



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[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva.00167.001.jpg]

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.


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[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/uva_jc.00287_large.jpg]




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