The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Paumanok
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Early 1888
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00166
Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: "Paumanok" was published first in the New York Herald on February 29, 1888. This manuscript was probably written in early 1888, shortly before the poem's publication.
Contributors to digital file: Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, Nick Krauter, Heather Morton, and Nicole Gray
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pub'd
personal
Paumanok.
Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad,
with copious commerce, steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce
or gentle
—and
—with
mighty hulls dark-gliding
in the distance:
Isle of sweet drinking-water—healthy air
and soil!—isle of the earth and brine!
Walt Whitman
sent to Herald Feb. 27 '88
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