[This famous poem—one of Whitman’s most vigorously descriptive, if not
his best in this form of composition—is written on a quarto sheet, and
signed: a few pencil corrections do not show in the print. The _MS._ was
sold in New York in 1903.]
[Illustration:
First Draught—May 1880 Walt Whitman
The Patrol at Barnegat
By Walt Whitman
Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high-running,
Steady the roar of the gale with incessant under tone muttering
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, and midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there, the milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand, spirts of snow fierce-slanting,
As, 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,
A group of dim, weird forms, snow-drift and night confronting,
Steadily, slowly, the hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the beach, by those milk-white combs careering,
That savage trinity warily watching
]