The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Periodicals
About this Item
Title: The Sobbing of the Bells
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: September 27, 1881
Whitman Archive ID: per.00018
Source: The Boston Weekly Globe 27 September 1881: [1]. 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, and Susan Belasco
 image 1 |  cropped image 1 |
THE SOBBING OF THE BELLS.1
(MIDNIGHT, SEPTEMBER 19-20, 1881.)
———
BY WALT WHITMAN.
———
The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,
The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,
(Full well they know that message in the darkness,
Full well return the sad reverberations.)
The passionate toll and clang—city to city, joining, sounding,
passing,
passing,
Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.
—[From a forthcoming volume.
Notes:
1. Reprinted as "The Sobbing of the Bells. (Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881)" in Leaves of Grass (1881–82). [back]