Leaves of Grass · Chapter
Paumanok explained
The chapter celebrates Paumanok (Long Island) as a place of natural beauty, contrasting its inland ocean with the Atlantic, and highlighting its fresh waters, healthy air, and salty shores.
What happens
The chapter celebrates Paumanok (Long Island) as a place of natural beauty, contrasting its inland ocean with the Atlantic, and highlighting its fresh waters, healthy air, and salty shores.
Themes in this chapter
Celebration of Nature and the Universe
The chapter vividly describes Paumanok's natural features—its shores, waters, air, and soil—in a tone of reverence and joy.
Characters to notice
- Paumanok
The island itself is personified and celebrated as a sea-beauty, stretching and basking with both inland and Atlantic shores.
Key passages
“Paumanok Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle—mighty hulls dark-gliding in the distance.”
Paumanok is a beautiful seaside land, lying relaxed in the sun, with one side washed by a busy inland sea full of trade and ships, and the other side touched by the Atlantic breeze, whether strong or soft, with large vessels moving silently in the distance.
Whitman paints a dual portrait of Paumanok as both a commercial hub and a natural haven.
“Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water—healthy air and soil! Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!”
This island has fresh streams for drinking, clean air and fertile land, as well as salty beaches, ocean winds, and sea spray.
The contrast between fresh and salt water emphasizes the island's rich and varied environment.