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About this Item
Title: Yonnodio
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: November 26, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: per.00024
Source: Critic 11 (26 November 1887): 267. 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 |
Yonnondio.1
A SONG, a poem of itself—the word itself a dirge,
Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night;
To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;
Yonnondio*—I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ra-
vine, with plains and mountains dark,
vine, with plains and mountains dark,
I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and war-
riors,
riors,
As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in
the twilight,
the twilight,
(Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls!
No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)
Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn'd they disappear;
To-day gives place, and fades—the cities, farms, factories
fade;
fade;
A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through
the air for a moment,
the air for a moment,
Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.
WALT WHITMAN.
———
*The sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.—W.W.