{
 "id": "walt-whitman/whispers-of-heavenly-death",
 "title": "Whispers of Heavenly Death",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 236,
 "container": "Whispers of Heavenly Death",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1871,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Washington, 1871)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1871 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesofgrawhit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "whispers-of-heavenly-death.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 72,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Whispers of heavenly death murmur’d I hear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With at times a half-dimm’d sadden’d far-off star,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Appearing and disappearing.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some soul is passing over.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}