The Walt Whitman Archive
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About this Item
Title: From Montauk Point
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: March 1, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: per.00112
Source: New York Herald 1 March 1888: 6. 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, and Susan Belasco
 image 1 |  cropped image 1 |
FROM MONTAUK POINT.1
TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD:—
I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak,2
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing
but sea and sky)
but sea and sky)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the
distance,
distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that
inbound urge and urge of waves,
inbound urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.
WALT WHITMAN.
Notes:
1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]
2. Montauk Point, now part of Montauk Point State Park in New York, is on the far eastern end of Long Island. [back]