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OF THAT BLITHE THROAT OF THINE.
[More than 83° north—about a good day's steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water—Greely heard the song of a single bird merrily sounding over the desolation.]OF that blithe throat of thine, from artic bleak and blank,
I'll mind the lesson, solitary bird: let me too welcome chilling drifts,
E'en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv'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,
But held by sluggish floes, pack'd in the Northern ice, the cumulus of years—
These with gay heart I also sing.
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Publication Information
"Of That Blithe Throat of Thine."
Harper's Monthly Magazine
70 (January 1885):
264.
Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).
Whitman Archive ID
per.00009