Lyric Poem · Death & Loss

Whispers of Heavenly Death

by Walt Whitman

Reading room

1WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear;

2Labial gossip of night—sibilant chorals;

3Footsteps gently ascending—mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;

4Ripples of unseen rivers—tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;

5(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

6I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;

7Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;

8With, at times, a half-dimm’d, sadden’d, far-off star,

9Appearing and disappearing.

10(Some parturition, rather—some solemn, immortal birth:

11On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,

12Some Soul is passing over.)

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“Whispers of Heavenly Death” by Walt Whitman — quilloak.com/poems/whispers-of-heavenly-death

Quick facts

Poem: Whispers of Heavenly Death
Poet: Walt Whitman
Length: 12 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Death & Loss, Nature, Sad

Craft notes

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Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 12 lines · 3 stanzas of 3–5 lines

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Text, source & rights

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Author record: Walt Whitman1819–1892
Source record: PoetryDBWhispers of Heavenly Death by walt-whitman, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 c789fdaa14666f6b…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.