The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Books by Whitman
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [begin page 394] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OF THAT BLITHE THROAT OF THINE.
[More than eighty-three degrees north—about a good day's steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water—Greely the explorer heard the
song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.]
Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,
I'll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling
drifts,
drifts,
E'en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain un-
nerv'd,
nerv'd,
Old age land-lock'd within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,
For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;
Not summer's zones alone—not chants of youth, or south's warm
tides alone,
tides alone,
But held by sluggish floes, pack'd in the northern ice, the cumulus
of years,
of years,
These with gay heart I also sing.