[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 ] EARLY LEGISLATIVE TURMOILS IN NEW JERSEY Pessimists point to the “frenzied politics” of our day as evidence of the facilis descensus Averni from the purity, the lofty and unselfish patriotism of the fathers; and they sigh over the decadence of the statesmen of these modern times, lament the corruption and essential dishonesty of parties and partisans in general, and yearn for a return of the purity and patriotism and statesmanship of the Fathers. The student of history, however, finds that human nature was and has been much the same through all the ages. The business contracts between merchants of Babylon, stamped on bricks five thousand years ago, and brought to light but yesterday, are in much the same terms as those settled in the courts to-day. The Code of Hammurabi, formulated 2200 B. C., shows in every sentence that like questions of rights and wrongs of persons and things were raised in that remote era as are discussed in the luminous pages of Blackstone, and determined in our own day in the fori of the several States, and in the Capitol at Washington. Is it possible, then, that the development of mankind has been on entirely different lines in the political arena? The thoughtful reader must say no. Freeman’s remark has become trite: “History is past politics, and politics past History.” The burning political issues of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799; the purchase of Louisiana; the Embargo of 1807–09; the annexation of Texas; the Oregon question, with its alluring alliteration “Fifty-four-forty or fight;” “Bleeding Kansas” and its other expressions, “Free Speech, Free Soil, Free Men;” Anti-Slavery, Abolitionism and Secession; the Greenback craze—not to speak of more recent partisan shibboleths—all were “politics” of the intensest sort in their day.