Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Children of Adam · 1865

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient⁠—a little space⁠—know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.

Where this text comes from

First published in Drum-Taps (New York, 1865). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps 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, children-of-adam.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L13.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd.” First published in Drum-Taps (New York, 1865). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/out-of-the-rolling-ocean-the-crowd/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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