Remember if you are dying | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: Remember if you are dying
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00278
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts at the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Box: 1
Folder: 88
Date: Between 1850 and 1860
Genre: poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, 8 x 15.5 cm, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: This manuscript was probably written between 1850 and 1860. The lines are similar in subject to lines in the poem "To One Shortly To Die," first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass . The use of ellipses within poetic lines was characteristic of Whitman's first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass , however, and lines in this manuscript also resemble lines that appeared in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." On the upper right corner of the manuscript appear the words "note last page of 'Ghost-seers'" in Whitman's hand, which may be a reference to one of the two volumes of The Night Side of Nature, Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers , by Catherine Crowe (London: T. C. Newby, 1848; G. Routledge & Co., 1852). Whitman mentioned the book in a conversation with Horace Traubel on December 9, 1889 ( With Walt Whitman in Camden , 6:180–2). The phrase "Ghost-seers" also recalls a statement regarding Emerson in "Leaves-Droppings," a section of correspondence and commentary Whitman appended to the 1856 edition: "[Emerson] sees the future of truths as our Spirit-seers discern the future of man..." Fragmentary lines written on the back of this manuscript leaf (uva.00561) were used in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself."