Sounds of the Winter

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Goodbye My Fancy · 1891

Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains⁠—many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train⁠—from nearer field, barn, house,
The whispering air⁠—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,
Children’s and women’s tones⁠—rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

Where this text comes from

First published in Good-Bye My Fancy (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891). Printed in Good-Bye My Fancy, whose title page calls it the 2d Annex to Leaves of Grass, and gathered in as the Second Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass, goodbye-my-fancy.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L7.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Sounds of the Winter.” First published in Good-Bye My Fancy (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/sounds-of-the-winter/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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