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The Dead Tenor

About This Item

  • Title: The Dead Tenor
  • Date: 8 November 1884
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00031
  • Source: Critic 5 (8 November 1884): 222. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Heather Morton Leslie Ianno Ramon Guerra Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Dead Tenor." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 20 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00031.xml (TEI)
per.00031.001per.00031.001_cropped

The Dead Tenor.1

As down the stage again, With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable, Back from the fading lessons of the past, I'd call, I'd tell 
  and own, How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice 
  from thee! (So firm—so liquid-soft—again that tremulous, manly 
  timbre! The perfect singing voice—deepest of all to me the lesson— 
  trial and test of all:) How through those strains distill'd—how the rapt ears, the  
  soul of me, absorbing Fernando's heart, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet 
  Gennaro's, I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants trans- 
  muting, Freedom's and Love's and Faith's unloos'd cantabile, (As perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation:) From these, for these, with these a hurried line, dead tenor, A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the 
  shovell'd earth, To memory of thee. NOVEMBER 4, 1884. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

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