Patroling Barnegat

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Sea-Drift · 1881

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.

Where this text comes from

First published in Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1881–82). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1881–82 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, sea-drift.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L14.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Patroling Barnegat.” First published in Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1881–82). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/patroling-barnegat/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by Walt Whitman