In Whitman's Hand

Manuscripts

About this Item

Title: Fancies at Navesink

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: Between about 1885 and 1888

Whitman Archive ID: yal.00039

Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 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: Dating this manuscript is difficult. Many of the poems listed belong to the eight-poem sequence "Fancies at Navesink," which was published first in Nineteenth Century in August 1885. If one concludes that Whitman imagined the arrangement outlined here before the initial publication of the poems, then he probably wrote this manuscript in the first half of 1885, before he submitted "Fancies for Navesink" and "After the Supper and Talk" to Henry M. Alden of Harper's (they were rejected). If, however, this list represents Whitman's ordering of poems for a cluster in a separate volume, like November Boughs (1888), then this manuscript could have been written between 1885 and 1888. The poems were never published in the order outlined in the manuscript.

Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "(This was pasted on wrapper)"

Contributors to digital file: Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, Megan Maher, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, and Nicole Gray



[begin leaf 1 recto] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/yal.00039.001.jpg]

  • Fancies at Navesink

1

After the Supper and Talk
You lingering sparse leaves of me
Ah not that granite dead & cold

published

You tides with ceaseless swell & ebb
2 Last of ebb & daylight waning
3 Proudly the flood comes in
4 With every heaving wave—
5 For last of all
Fancies at Navesink
The Pilot in the mist
Had I the choice
Ah, not this g

[begin leaf 1 verso] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Page image: https://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/yal.00072.009.jpg]




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