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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Patrolling Barnegat

poem

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ16869315 ↗
Source-derived summary

"Patrolling Barnegat" is a poem by Walt Whitman, first published in Leaves of Grass. It is the penultimate poem in Book XIX titled Sea-Drift. The poem follows "Song for All Seas, All Ships" and is followed by the last poem of the section "After the Sea-Ship". It was written in 1880 when Whitman retired to Camden, New Jersey. The poem deals with a stormy night at the coast of Barnegat.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Patrolling Barnegat” is poem. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Patrolling, Barnegat and poem, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1880—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Patrolling, Barnegat and poem is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “poem” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16869315. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1880.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Patrolling Barnegat”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Patrolling Barnegat primary sources, Patrolling Barnegat archive and Patrolling research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Patrolling Barnegat”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Patrolling Barnegat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.