Annotated Text of Starting from Paumanok

Starting from Paumanok

By Walt Whitman

Whitman uses the Native American name Paumanok for his birthplace, Long Island.

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,

Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother;

As in many of Whitman’s poems, here he celebrates wildly different landscapes, from the “populous pavements” of New York City to an isolated and relatively primitive home “in Dakota’s woods.” The speaker claims to belong equally to all of them.

After roaming many lands—lover of populous pavements;

Dweller in Mannahatta, my city—or on southern savannas;

Or a soldier camp’d, or carrying my knapsack and gun—or a miner in California;

Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring;

Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,

Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;

Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri—aware of mighty Niagara;

Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains—the hirsute and strong-breasted bull;

Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced—stars, rain, snow, my amaze;

Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones, and the mountainhawk’s,

And heard at dusk the unrival’d one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars,

This first section of the poem is a single sentence, mostly made up of phrases that describe the speaker, including where he has been, what he has seen, and what he has learned. The sentence ends with the main clause, “I strike up for a New World,” which begins the action of the poem.

Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.