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Mannahatta

About This Item

  • Title: Mannahatta
  • Date: 27 February 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00099
  • Source: New York Herald 27 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. "Mannahatta." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 25 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00099.xml (TEI)
per.00099.005per.00099.005_cropped

MANNAHATTA.1

My city's fit and noble name resumed,2 Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, 
  meaning A rocky founded island, where ever gayly dash 
  the coming, going, hurrying sea waves. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

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

2. Mannahatta, meaning "land of many hills," is the Native American name Whitman uses for New York City. In the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass, Whitman italicized the final line and changed it to read, "A rocky founded island—shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves." [back]

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