Shakespeare-Bacon’s Cipher

I doubt it not⁠—then more, far more;
In each old song bequeath’d⁠—in every noble page or text,
(Different⁠—something unreck’d before⁠—some unsuspected author,)
In every object, mountain, tree, and star⁠—in every birth and life,
As part of each⁠—evolv’d from each⁠—meaning, behind the ostent,
A mystic cipher waits infolded.

Where this text comes from

First published in Good-Bye My Fancy (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891). Printed in Good-Bye My Fancy, whose title page calls it the 2d Annex to Leaves of Grass, and gathered in as the Second Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. The 1891 volume prints the title as “Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher.” [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass, goodbye-my-fancy.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L6.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Shakespeare-Bacon’s Cipher.” First published in Good-Bye My Fancy (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/shakespeare-bacons-cipher/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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