In cities now, modern, I wander,
Days, places, indifferent—though various, the same.
Still I adhere to my city, my own Manhattan with spires, with dwellings so dense,
America’s great democratic island city, the place of my dearest love;
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
Ah, if one could float off to New York this afternoon.

I too of the Mannahatta—Walt Whitman, of Manhattan the son,
I think I have reason to be the proudest son alive,
For I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city, the world’s city—
The fine vista of so many splendid buildings,
Tall, ornamental, noble buildings,
Our tall-topt marble and iron beauties,
High growths of iron, slender, strong, light,
They seem to almost reach the clouds.

More and more, too, the old name absorbs into me—Mannahatta, “the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.” Mannahatta meant to the Indians an island about which the rushing, tempestuous, demonic waters flow—keep up a devil of a swirl, whirl, ebullition—have a hell of a time. How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city! The word itself, how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action.

Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d,
Curious, gay, observant, and singing thereof,
And no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
Me, a Manhattanese, the most loving, free, friendly, proud and arrogant;
Day upon day and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up—
That I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious.

When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,
The tumultuous streets, the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet,
The city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,
The thick crowds, well-dressed, gaily-dressed—hurrying, feverish, electric crowds,
The continual crowds as if they would never end.

Pondering Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, the streets I knew so well, 
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, (and bathed in the waters around it.)
Again my walks through the Mannahatta,
I resume with curiosity the crowds, those great tides of humanity,
I always enjoy seeing the city let loose,
When the mass is densest, when the pageant moves forward visible, and on the rampage,
A million people—endless humanity in all phases,
Never-ending human currents, with ever-shifting movements,
Manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality.

Many, many a time have I enjoyed such crowds—experienced the thrill of the crowd—
The men and women I saw were all near to me.
How strong is our instinct to seek social pleasures amidst a multitude;
For what, from what, who can tell?
The mere presence of a crowd, gathered to behold a spectacle, is a powerful excitement,
It seizes you in spite of yourself,
Even against your sympathies, your dreams.

For the most part I have desired to remain in the midst of the hurly-burly. I am at home in such places—to be where the crowd is, to make use of its magnetism, to borrow life from its magnetism. I respond sensitively to the life of the street. Its almost fierce contagion goes to confirm my old faith in the masses. The good nature, the nonchalance, of the people—what may not come of that? The crowd needs no savior—the crowd will be its own savior; I hope for all things from the crowd.

I remember the big affairs on Broadway,
(I never missed one of them,)
The myriad feet of rushing Broadway,
The broad, bright current, streaming,
Mighty land-river, pouring down through the center of Manhattan,
With their turbulent musical chorus, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
The awful din of the street, the heavy bass, low roar, great hum and harshness,
Noise, chaos, bedlam, composite and musical, joyously mingled in the amazing chorus.

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—visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson! Along Broadway, observing the endless wonders of that thoroughfare of the world, you see everything as you pass—the pageants, processions, spectacles, shifting tableaus—what a fascinating chaos, a sort of million-hued, ever-changing, endless panorama. I sometimes think I am the particular man who enjoys the show of all these things in New York more than any other mortal, as if it was all got up just for me to observe and study.

The lamps are lit—the shops blaze,
Great windows rich with lots of fine things,
(Are they not about the same, the civilized world over?)

As I turn from the crowded street,
And peer through the plate glass at the pictures or rich goods,
The reflections, moving, glistening, silent,
Crowds of women, richly-dressed, continually passing, ambulating to and fro,
The faces and figures, old and young, all so various, all so phantasmic,
Altogether different, superior in style and looks from any to be seen anywhere else,
As if New York would show what it can do in its humanity, its choicest physique and physiognomy,
And its countless prodigality of locomotion, glitter, magnetism, and happiness.

A dreamer would not fail to see spirits walking amid the crowd; devils busily whispering into scheming ears; the demons of falsehood, avarice, wrath, and impurity flitting hither and thither, and mingling eagerly their suggestions in that seething mass—the hot, seething atmosphere of human plots and devices. New York is one of the most crime-haunted and dangerous cities in Christendom; any affable stranger who makes friendly offers is very likely to attempt to swindle you as soon as he can get into your confidence.
But there are angels, too, among or above the hurrying mass, seeking to lift some soul out of evil ways, or to guard it from imminent temptation.

I know well the real heart of this mighty city. Doubtless, there were plenty of hard-up folks along the pavements. Making all allowances for the shadows and side-streaks of a million-headed-city, the brief total of the impressions, the human qualities, is to me comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, a singular combination of reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness, are not only constantly visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average.

If you wish the profound, generous, encompasssing things, New York is your natural center of gravity. Fully aware of all that can be said on the other side, I find in this visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken.
(I get along, very sociably, with any of them—as I let them do all the talking; only now and then I have a long confab, or ask a suggestive question or two.)
These, I say, and the like of these, completely satisfy my senses of power, fulness, motion, etc., and give me, through such senses and appetites, and through my esthetic conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfilment.

I, lover of populous pavements, hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,
Among the men and women the multitude, 
I have gone thither, I have carefully viewed them,
I have not pierced those places with the eyes of the intellect merely,
Far more have I pierced them with the sense of sympathy and love;
I think that the persons thereof are mine, that I alone understand them and love them.

The city of such women—many beautiful women—I am mad to be with them!
The city of such young men—the mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes—
I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
I must pursue this people into its haunts—the great million, the city, where it lives.

City of orgies, walks and joys!
Wonderfully open to every influence, opportunity,
Marvellously so, in your complex make-up,
Good or bad I never question you,
I have rejected nothing you offer’d me, I do not condemn anything,
I love all, I chant and celebrate all that is yours.

Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering,
I often meet strangers in the street and love them,
O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it,
(As if I do not secretly love strangers!)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers as I pass?
I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs,
I saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly—hundreds of men and women!
Yet never told them a word.

The greatest love is that which makes no profession;
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love,
It is that which contains itself, regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Which never invites and never refuses.

Superb-faced Manhattan!
To make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever faces,
Faces and faces and faces—
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,
The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face,
The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock.

This now is too lamentable a face for a man—some abject louse asking leave to be,
This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage,
This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,
This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

Yet as the faces the masks appear,
I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,
Out of this face—out from behind this mask—emerge banners and horses,
This face is a life-boat; O superb! I see what is coming.
What can be subtler and finer than this play of faces on such occasions in these responding crowds?
What goes more to one’s heart?—the heart of a son of Manhattan, 
With a face of undying friendship and indulgence toward men and women, and of one who finds the same returned many fold.

When the façades of the interminable rows of houses are alive with people,
When eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time, clear eyes that look straight at you,
What curious questioning glances,
The glimpse just caught of the eyes and expressions—glints of love!
Do you know the talk of those turning eyeballs?
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
O that you saw these million eyes of Manhattan!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly,
I too arising, answering, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.
O Manhattan! not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, 
Nor my share in the soiree or feast repay me,
Not those, but as I pass, frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own—these repay me.

Keep your woods O nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your splendid silent sun,
Give me these phantoms incessant and endless, give me faces and streets,
The brilliancy, the contact with crowds of new faces!
Give me interminable eyes, let me see new ones every day,
Looking you straight in the eye!
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
Manhattan faces and eyes for me forever.

NEXT: Love of Women

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).