Excerpt from The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Vol. 1 of 2: Much of Which Has Been but Recently Discovered, With Various Early Manuscripts Now First Published For some reason Whitman seems to have preferred that his past, particularly the period before 18 5 5 and certain later periods, should remain secret except in so far as he himself might be willing to illuminate it. That was, of course, the privilege of the living poet; but it is as clearly the duty of the biographer who writes long after his death to seek in that past, and especially in the literary records of that past, the true evolution of the man and the writer. There were two probable reasons why Whitman thus did his part in intensifying the shadow cast upon his youth and young manhood by the dis proportionately brilliant light of those minute chronicles written by friends who had known him only in old age: (a) the early work of his pen was decidedly inferior and uninspired, and (b) Whitman found it congenial and convenient, as have most prophets, not only to cast in his lot with the future, but also rather sedulously to cultivate the obscurity of his own past. Moses must emerge from the desert and Mahomet from his mountain in order to obtain a hearing; Whitman followed a similar prophetic instinct in his efforts to make a picturesque and romantic wilderness of his own early environment. To that extent his autobiography as hitherto known is unrealistic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.