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The Dismantled Ship

About This Item

  • Title: The Dismantled Ship
  • Date: 23 February 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00097
  • Source: New York Herald 23 February 1888: 4. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Dismantled Ship." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 15 December 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00097.xml (TEI)
per.00097.004per.00097.004_cropped

The Dismantled Ship.1

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, On sluggish, lonesome, muddy waters, anchor'd 
  near the shore,2 An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, 
  disabled, done and broken,3 After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd 
  up at last and hawser'd tight, Lies rusting, mouldering. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

2. In the "Sands at Seventy" printing of this poem, Whitman omitted "muddy" from the second line. [back]

3. In the "Sands at Seventy" printing of this poem, "and broken" does not appear in the third line. [back]

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