This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States.
Where this text comes from
First published in Leaves of Grass (Washington, 1871). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1871 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [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, memories-of-president-lincoln.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (2)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L4.
Cite this poem
Walt Whitman (1819–1892).
“This Dust Was Once the Man.” First published in Leaves of Grass (Washington, 1871).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/this-dust-was-once-the-man/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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