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Whitman's City Writings: Poetry and Prose
Below are excerpts from a wide range of Whitman's writings. They
are presented chronologically and, in the case of the poems, in their
first published versions. Read the selections; let the various visions
of the city play off each other; chart changes; note similarities;
find the full version from which these excerpts were chosen. You also
might want to look at the photographic images of New York City offered
on this site. Whitman's writings record and respond to the city as
it grew exponentiallly--in size, in population, in power.
Table of Contents: (the selections can be accessed by scrolling down,
or by the links)
Aurora
editorials, 1842
Section
8 of "Song of Myself," 1855
Section
9 of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 1856
"City
of Orgies" in "Calamus," 1860
"Mannahatta,"
1860
"City
of Ships," 1865
Letters
to Peter Doyle, 1868
"Democratic
Vistas," 1871
"Broadway,"
1888
Aurora editorials, 1842
(The following are the first few paragraphs from three of the
more than 180 articles Whitman wrote for the New York Aurora
in 1842 while he was editor of the newspaper. See Walt Whitman
of the New York Aurora, Editor at Twenty-two, edited by Joseph
Jay Rubin and Charles H. Brown, 1950.)
"Life in a New York Market" [March 16, 1842]
One Saturday night, not long since, a fantasy popped into our
brain that we would like to take a stroll of observation through
a market. Accordingly, sallying forth, we proceeded to put
our wishes into execution. A short distance brought us to that large,
dirty looking structure in Grand street, where much store of meats,
vegetables, et cetera, is daily dispensed to the sojourners of that
section of our city.
We entered. What an array of rich, red sirloins, luscious steaks,
delicate and tender joints, muttons, livers, and all the long list
of various flesh stuffs, burst upon our eyes! There they hung, tempting,
seductive--capable of begetting ecstacies in the mouth of an epicure--or
curses in the throat of a Grahamite. By the powers of cookery! the
condition of the republic is not so grievous after all; we cannot
be on the verge of despair, when such spectacles as these may be
witnessed in the land!
How the crowd rolls along! There comes the journeyman mason (we
know him by his limy dress) and his wife--she bearing a little
white basket on her arm. . . . Notice that prim, red-cheeked damsel,
for whom is being weighed a small pork steak. She is maid of all
work to an elderly couple, who have sent her to purvey for their
morrow's dinner. How the young fellow who serves her, at the same
time casts saucy, lovable glances at her pretty face; and she is
nothing loth, but pleased enough at the chance of a little coquetry.
Cunning minx! she but carries out the foible of her sex, and apes
her superiors.
--------------------------
"The Last of Lively Frank" [March 23, 1842]
One of the pleasantest afternoons of last week, as we were taking
a stroll on the Battery, a man came up and accosted us by name,
asking if we had an hour's leisure to accompany him to the upper
part of the city. A second look at the stranger brought him to our
recollection as one whom we had met in other scenes and other places.
He stated to us the object for which he desired our visit, and we
readily accompanied him.
Passing up the walks of the beautiful promenade which is the pride
of Gotham, we made our egress through the iron gate, and wended
along Broadway, the Park, Chatham street, and Bowery, to Grand street.
Here our conductor turned to the right, and after keeping on a few
blocks, wheeled again to the left, and led us down one of those
dirty narrow thoroughfares, which abound in that section of the
city. He stopped in front of a blackish, grimy, miserable looking
house, and opening the door without knocking, bade us enter with
him. Not riskless of some danger of barked shins or a bruised head,
we followed our guide up a filthy stairs and into an attic room.
----------------------------
"Scenes of Last Night" [April 1, 1842]
Between seven and eight o'clock last evening we visited the scene
of the fire in Broome and Delancy streets. For several blocks before
arriving there, our passage was impeded by squads of people hurrying
to and fro with rapid and eager pace. Women carrying small bundles--men
with heated and sweaty faces--little children, many of them weeping
and sobbing--met us every rod or two. Then there were stacks of
furniture upon the sidewalks and even in the street; puddles of
water, and frequent lengths of hose-pipe endangered the pedestrian's
safety; and the hubbub, the trumpets of the engine foremen, the
crackling of the flames, and the lamentations of those who were
made homeless by the conflagration--all sounded louder and louder
as we approached, and at last grew to one deafening din.
It was a horrible yet magnificent sight! When our eyes caught
a full view of it, we beheld a space of several acres, all covered
with smouldering ruins, mortar, red hot embers, piles of smoking
half burnt walls--a sight to make a man's heart sick, and keep him
awake at night, when lying in his bed.
We stood on the south side of Broome street. In every direction
around, except the opposite front, there was one compact mass of
human flesh--upon the stoops, and along the side walks, and blocking
up the street, even to the edge of where the flames were raging.
Section 8 of "Song of Myself," 1855
(Changes in the final lines between this and the death-bed edition
are worthy of attention, and an assignment focusing on these changes
can be found in the Student
Projects on this site.)
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.
The youngster and the redfaced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
It is so . . . . I witnessed the corpse . . . . there the pistol had
fallen.
The blab of the pave . . . . the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles
and talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrograting thumb, the clank
of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and pelts
of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites . . . . the fury of roused mobs,
The flap of the curtained litter--the sick man inside, borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd--the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
The souls moving along . . . . are they invisible while the least
atom of the stones is visible?
What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall on the flags sunstruck
or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give
birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here . . . . what
howls restrained by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the resonance of them . . . . I come again and again.
Section 9 of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,"
1856
(In the1856 edition, the poem is entitled "Sun-Down Poem." It becomes
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in 1860.)
Flow on, river! Flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set, drench with your splendor me, or the
men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Manahatta!--stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free Manhattanese!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or I or any one after us!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
looking upon you!
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
haste with the hasting current!
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in
the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water! faithfully hold it till all downcast
eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's
head, in the sun-lit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners,
sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sun-set!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at night-fall!
cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are!
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul!
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest
aromas!
Thrive, cities! Bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient
rivers!
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual!
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting!
We descend upon you and all things, we arrest you all,
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids,
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality,
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations
of ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb beautiful ministers!
you novices!
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within
us,
We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
"City of Orgies" in "Calamus," 1860
(This poem was simply titled "Calamus" No. 18 in the 1860 edition
and became "City of Orgies" in the 1867 edition.)
CITY of my walks and joys!
City whom that I have lived and sung there will one day make you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you--not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles,
repay me,
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with goods
in them,
Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soiree
or feast;
Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash
of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own--these repay me,
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.
"Mannahatta," 1860
(In 1881, the last seven lines of this 1860 version are deleted,
and three new concluding lines are added, a change worthy of close
study.)
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city, and
behold here is the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical,
self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with
tall and wonderful spires,
Rich, hemmed thick all around with sailships and steamships--an island
sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets--high growths of iron, slender, strong
light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies;
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, the larger adjoining
islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferryboats,
the black sea-steamers, well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business--the houses
of business of the ship merchants and money-brokers--the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods--the manly race of drivers of horses--the
brown-faced sailors,
The summer-air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells--the broken ice in the river, passing
along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide;
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd, beautiful-faced,
looking you straight in the eyes;
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles--Broadway--the women--the shops and shows,
The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating;
A million people--manners free and superb--open voices--hospitality--the
most courageous and friendly young men;
The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the
city of spires and masts!
The city nested in bays! my city! The city of such women, I am mad
to be with them! I will return after death to be with them!
The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy without I
often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
"City of Ships" from Drum-Taps,
1865
(Much of Drum-Taps was written while Whitman visited soldiers
in Washington, D.C. hospitals. Later these poems were incorporated
into Leaves of Grass and some were shifted, though the poems
remained together, for the most part.)
City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful sharp bow'd steamd-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here,
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and
out, with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores! city of tall facades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city--mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city!
Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offer'd me--whom you adopted, I have adopted;
Good or bad, I never question you--I love all--I do not condemn any
thing;
I chant and celebrate all that is yours--yet peace no more;
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine;
War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!
Letters to Peter Doyle, 1868,
(While Whitman was on vacation in New York from his job as a clerk
in Washington, D.C. he wrote regularly to Peter Doyle. These letters
are collected in Calamus, a series of letters written during
the years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a young friend, edited
by Richard Maurcie Bucke, M.D., 1897.)
Oct. 6, 1868. Dear Pete. There is nothing special with me
to write to you about. The time slips away mighty quick. It seems
but a day or two since I left Washington yet am now on the fourth
week of my furlough. Last night was about the greatest political show
I every saw even in New York--a grand Democratic meeting and torch
light processions. I was out in the midst of them, to see the sights.
I always enjoy seeing the City let loose and on the rampage as it
was last night to the fullest extent. I cannot begin to tell you how
the Democrats showed themselves by thousands and tens of thousands.
The whole City was lit up with torches. Cannons were fired all night
in various parts of the City. As I was on my way home in a 2nd Avenue
car between 12 and 1 o'clock we got blocked in by a great part of
the returning procession. Of course we had to just stand and take
it. I enjoyed it hugely from the front platform. They were nearly
an hour passing us, streaming both sides. In the procession were all
sorts of objects, models of ships forty or fifty feet long, full manned,
cars of liberty with women, etc., etc. The ranks spread across the
street, and everybody carried a blazing torch. Fireworks were going
off in every direction. The sky was full of big balloons letting off
rockets and Roman candles 'way up among the stars. The excitement,
the rush, and the endless torches gave me great pleasure. Ever and
anon the cannon, some near some distant. I heard them long after I
got to bed. It sounded like a distant engagement. I send you the Herald
with a sort of account of the show, but it doesn't do half justice
to it.--The speeches were of no account at all.
I suppose you got a letter and paper from me Saturday, Oct. 3rd.
I received your welcome letter of Oct. 1st, also the Star.
I read Mr. Noyes' western letters with pleasure. So you have something
new in R. R.--new offices and rules. The R. R. [street railroad] business
here is very different. They go through these long routes on the rush--no
mercy to the cattle. The 3rd Avenue R. R. lost 36 horses in one day
last summer, one of those hot days. We are having pleasant weather
just now, seems like Indian summer. So long, dear Pete. From your
loving comrade, Walt.
-------------------------
New York, Oct. 9, 1868. Dear Pete. It is splendid here this
forenoon--bright and cool. I was out early taking a short walk by
the river only two squares from where I live. I received your letter
last Monday, also the Star same date, and glad enough to hear
from you and the oftener the better, every word is good (I am grateful
to these young men on the R. R. for their love and remembrance to
me--Dave and Jim and Charely Sorrell, Tom Hassett, Harry on No. 11).
I sent you a letter on the 6th which I suppose you received next day.
Tell Henry Hurt I received his letter of Oct. 5th all right, and that
it was welcome. Political meetings here every night. The coming Pennsylvania
and Ohio elections cause much talk and excitement. The fall is upon
us; overcoats are in demand. I already begin to think about my return
to Washington. A month has nearly passed away. I have received an
invitation from a gentleman and his wife, friends of mine, at Providence,
R. I., and shall probably go down there and spend a few days latter
part of October. Shall I tell you about it or part of it just to fill
up? I generally spend the forenoon in my room writing, etc., then
take a bath fix up and go out about 12 and loafe somewhere or call
on someone down town or on business, or perhaps if it is very pleasant
and I feel like it ride a trip with some driver friend on Broadway
from 23rd Street to Bowling Green, three miles each way. (Every day
I find I have plenty to do, every hour is occupied with something.)
You know it is a never ending amusement and study and recreation for
me to ride a couple of hours of a pleasant afternoon on a Broadway
stage in this way. You see everything as you pass, a sort of living,
endless panorama--shops and splendid buildings and great windows;
and on the broad sidewalks crowds of women richly dressed continually
passing altogether different, superior in style and looks from any
to be seen anywhere else--in fact a perfect stream of people--men
too dressed in high style, and plenty of foreigners--and then in the
streets the thick crowd of carriages, stages, carts, hotel and private
coaches, and in fact all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams,
mile after mile, and the splendor of such a great street and so many
tall, ornamental, noble buildings many of them of white marble, and
the gayety and motion on every side: you will not wonder how much
attraction all this is on a fine day, to a great loafer like me, who
enjoys so much seeing the busy world move by him, and exhibiting itself
for his amusement, while he takes it easy and just looks on and observes.
Then about the Broadway drivers, nearly all of them are my personal
friends. Some have been attached to me for years and I to them. But
I believe I have already mentioned them in a former letter. Yesterday
I rode the trip I describe, with a friend on a 5th Avenue stage--No.
26, a sort [of] namesake of yours, Pete Calhoun, I have known him
9 or 10 years. The day was was fine and I enjoyed the trip muchly.
So I try to put in something in my letters to give you an idea of
how I pass part of my time and what I see here in New York. Of course
I have quite a variety. Some four or five hours every day I most always
spend in study, writing, etc. The other serves for a good change.
I am writing two or three pieces. I am having finished about 225 copies
of Leaves of Grass bound up, to supply orders. Those copies
form all that is left of the old edition. Then there will be no more
in the market till I have my new and improved edition set up and stereotyped,
which it is my present plan to do the ensuing winter at my leisure
in Washington. Mother is well, I take either dinner or supper with
her every day. Remember me to David Stevens and John Towers. Tell
Harry on No. 11 I will go to the hall again and see if I can find
that man in the Sheriff's office. I send my love and so long
for the present. Yours for life, dear Pete (and death the same).
"Democratic Vistas," 1871
(This essay was first published as a whole work in 1871, though
parts appeared earlier in newspapers and magazines)
. . . After an absence, I am now again (September, 1870) in New
York City and Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The splendor, picturesqueness,
and oceanic amplitude and rush of these great cities, the unsurpassed
situations, rivers and bay, sparkling sea-tides, costly and lofty
new buidlings, facades of marble and iron, of original grandeur and
elegance of design, with the masses of gay color, the preponderance
of white and blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuous
streets, Broadway, the heavy, low, musical roar, hardly ever intermitted,
even at night; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, the wharves, the
great Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of hills (as I wander among
them this beautiful fall weather, musing, watching, absorbing)--the
assemblages of citizens in their groups, conversations, trades, evening
amusements, or along the by-quarters--these, I say, and the like of
these, completely satisfy my senses of power, fullness, motion, etc.,
and give me, through such senses and appetites, and through my aesthetic
conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfillment. Always
and more and more, as I cross the East and North rivers, the ferries,
or with the pilots in their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall
Street, or the Gold Exchange, I realize (if we must admit such partialisms)
that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open
air, in ther storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests,
sea--but in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great--in
this profusion of teeming humanity,--in these ingenuities, streets,
goods, houses, ships--these hurrying, feverish, electric crowds of
men, their complicated business genius (not least among the geniuses),
and all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry concentrated
here.
But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur
of the general superficial effect, coming down to what is of the only
real importance, Personalities, and examining minutely, we question,
we ask, Are there, indeed, men here worthy the name? Are there
athletes? Are there perfect women, to match the generous material
luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners?
Are there crops of fine youths, and majestic persons? Are there arts
worthy freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religious
civilization--the only justification of a great material one? Confess
that to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort
of dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities, crowded with petty grotesques,
malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that
everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, barroom, official chair,
are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity--everywhere
the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe--everywhere an
abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded,
dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good
motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with
a range of manners, or rather lack of manners (considering the advantages
enjoy'd), probably the meanest to be seen in the world.
Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them
the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new-founded
literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or to
pander to what is called taste--not only to amuse, pass away time,
celebrate the beautiful, the refined, the past, or exhibit technical,
rhythmic, or grammatical dexterity--but a literature underlying life,
religious, consistent with science, handling the elements and forces
with competent power, teaching and training men--and, as perhaps the
most precious of its results, achieving the entire redemption of woman
out of these incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and
every kind of dyspeptic depletion--and thus insuring to the States
a strong and sweet Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers--is what
is needed.
"Broadway," 1888
(The poem first appeared in 1888 in the New York Herald
and then was included in the 1888-89 edition of Leaves of Grass)
WHAT hurrying human tides, or day or night?
What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!
What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!
What curious questioning glances--glints of love!
Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!
Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups!
(Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales;
Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;)
Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!
Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming,
mocking life!
Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!
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