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To the Sunset Breeze

About This Item

  • Title: To the Sunset Breeze
  • Date: December 1890
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00139
  • Source: Lippincott's Magazine 46 (December 1890): 861. Our transcription is based on a digital image 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. "To the Sunset Breeze." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 25 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00139.xml (TEI)
per.00139.001

TO THE SUNSET BREEZE.1

AH, whispering, something again, unseen, Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat; Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than 
  talk, book, art, (Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the 
  rest—and this is of them,) So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on 
  my face and hands, Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me, (Distances balk'd—occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot.) I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes, I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself swift- 
  swimming in space; Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless store, 
  God sent, (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,) Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and 
  cannot tell, Art thou not universal concrete's distillation? Law's, all Astronomy's 
  last refinement? Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee? Walt Whitman.

Notes

1. Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). [back]

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