Walt Whitman from about 1869.  Photo from the Library of Congress.

By Paul Goldfinger,  Editor @Blogfinger.net

Walt Whitman  (born 5/31/1819 in New York and died in Camden NJ  3/26/1892)  was considered to be “America’s Poet” by Ezra Pound.  He has had the most influence over American “free verse” along with Emily Dickinson.  His most famous work is Leaves of Grass.

According to an expert source, Whitman loved the ocean:

“The sea, perhaps Whitman’s favorite metaphor, is mentioned over and over in all phases of his work, starting with the 1855 ‘Song of Myself’:

“You sea! I resign myself to you also / I am integral with you . . . I too am of one phase and of all phases.”

From a piece in the New Yorker:   A quote from the writer and friend John Burroughs, “There is sea-salt in Whitman’s poetry, strongly realistic epithets and phrases, that had their birth upon the shore, and that perpetually recur to one as he saunters on the beach,” and that “No phase of nature seems to have impressed him so deeply as the sea, or recurs so often in his poems.” Burroughs even thought that his friend had “a look about him . . . of the gray, eternal sea that he so loved, near which he was born, and that had surely set its seal upon him.”

And here is another Whitman line, referring to the sea:  “proud music of the sea storm”  (don’t know the source)

In late September, early October, 1883,  Whitman checked into the Sheldon House in Ocean Grove with a colleague, naturalist John Borroughs, and they spent one or two weeks there. *

The Sheldon was one of Ocean Grove’s finest hotels with 300 rooms.  It had views of Wesley Lake, the Ocean,  and Founders’ Park.

The Sheldon House. Ocean Grove, NJ. Internet photo.

The landmark hotel was built in 1875 by Welcome Sheldon who turned it into the largest, most elegant, and best situated in the Grove.  It was near the ocean at Central Ave. and Atlantic Ave.

From OG writer Perdita Buchan:  By 1879, Ocean Grove had a newspaper, a post office, and two general stores, while the Sheldon House promised speaking tubes from bedroom to office, gas in all rooms, an elevator, and a “monster safe for the storage of valuables.”

While he was at the Sheldon House, Whitman began work on a new poem called “By Thine Own Lips, O Sea.”     A copy of his earliest draft was written on Sheldon House stationery.  Eventually the poem was completed and then published in Harpers Magazine in 1884 with the name of  “With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea.”

final poem

Here is a reference card from the Whitman Archives:

The first draft of the poem is written on the back of this page:

Sheldon stationery.  From the Walt Whitman Archive

Whitman’s first draft written in Ocean Grove

This poem contained these lines:

“day and night I wander on the beach….”

“With undertone of muffled lion roar

And skreel of whistling wind,

and hiss of spray,

tale of elemental passion,

confided to me”

It was suspected that Whitman was a homosexual.  But, those two men checking into the Sheldon did not create a furor because they were collaborating on a book, and Burroughs was well known as a confirmed heterosexual.

We * learned of Whitman’s visit from an anonymous Blogfinger fan who sent us the information from the Whitman Archives. Other papers of Whitman can be found in the Library of Congress, the University of North California,  and Yale University.

In 1912  the new owner,  impressed with the building’s location across from Founders Park, and with a great view of the FitzGerald Fountain  (1907), changed the name to the Fountain House;  so this does tell us the earliest name for Ocean Grove’s newly restored  fountain. (2019)

In February, 1918, that grand hotel burned down to its brick foundation along with a number of other structures in the neighborhood including the Surf Avenue Hotel.

In the 1990’s, Kevin Chambers organized a Whitman Festival in Ocean Grove which became the largest and best known poetry festival in America. Unfortunately it was not renewed after 4 years.

GORDON TURK  from a recording made in the Great Auditorium of Ocean Grove.  “Sortie in Eb Major”