"O Earth, My Likeness"(1860).     A.Ms.draft      ([ ])18)

Includes verse note
Friends of the Detroit Public Library, Inc.        706


1860        O Earth, My Likeness; a poem. a.ms. (1p. 201/2 x 16 cm.)

Draft with many corrections. Number thirty-six of Calamus as published in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, Boston, Thayer and Eldridge, 1860-61, p. 374. The printed form is, except for slight changes, identical with the draft. This manuscript was cancelled by Walt Whitman by drawing a line straight through the middle.                                                                           (18)

   8         VII

O Earth, my likeness, for all you
     look so impassive, ample
     spheric there, I now [suspect?]
     that is not all,
I now [think] suspect there is something
     terrible in you ready to
     burst forth,
[For our [*athletic*] course and coarse love,]
     [me]
For an athlete loves me-- [*and I him --but*]
     toward him there is something
     fierce and terrible in me,
I dare not tell it in 
     words-- not even in
     these songs. ---
Rel.

[What do call]
[Do you apply[?]]
[to over[?]] is not
call Religion in
one of these to
Respectabilities [?]
a passing [form]
perhaps a rid[?]
excrescence ?

[*CALAMUS. 36.
3rd EDM. p. 374*]

[*706*]