A fact from The Sleepers (poem) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 April 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Walt Whitman's poem "The Sleepers" contains "one of the most powerful and evocative passages about slavery in American literature"?
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Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
... that Walt Whitman's poem "The Sleepers" contains "one of the most powerful and evocative passages about slavery in American literature"?
ALT1:... that Walt Whitman's 1855 poem "The Sleepers" initially contained his most direct condemnation of slavery, but he removed it in later publications?
Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Since the poem has so many versions (as explained in the article), maybe preface all quotes with the edition they're taken from? The quotes mentioning the whale don't appear to be in any version of the poem I can find online, e. g. Gutenberg, poetry.com, poemhunter.com. IAmNitpicking (talk) 19:17, 21 April 2021 (UTC)Reply
IAmNitpicking, I'd consider an early version of the metaphor in Whitman's notebook to be pretty clear attribution of where that quote comes from (it's from his notebook, not the finished version of the poem) Eddie891TalkWork15:12, 5 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Accepting offline sources in good faith (not used in hook). GeneralPoxter (talk) 16:28, 15 April 2021 (UTC)