The Walt Whitman Archive
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About this Item
Title: The Dead Tenor
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: November 8, 1885
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, and Susan Belasco
 image 1 |  cropped image 1 |
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,
and own,
How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice
from thee!
from thee!
(So firm—so liquid-soft—again that tremulous, manly
timbre!
timbre!
The perfect singing voice—deepest of all to me the lesson—
trial and test of all:)
trial and test of all:)
How through those strains distill'd—how the rapt ears, the
soul of me, absorbing
soul of me, absorbing
Fernando's heart, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet
Gennaro's,
Gennaro's,
I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants trans-
muting,
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,
shovell'd earth,
To memory of thee.
NOVEMBER 4, 1884.
WALT WHITMAN.