The sun was low in the west one winter day, a gray discouraged sky overhead,
The winter-day declining, the short last daylight of December,
The driving storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
There could not be presented a more chilling, arctic, grim-extended, depressing scene.

I too watched the Twelfth-month seagulls,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Soaring, soaring, irrespective of cold or storm,
Graceful, powerful, beautiful, satisfying,
Their simple motion a delight.

The sun shines, but sharp cold and the wind whistling,
The earth hard frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the pond,
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice—I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice.

Stripes of snow on the limbs of trees,
Lumbermen in their winter camp,
The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making.
Winter-grain sprouts, the winter-grain falls in the ground,
From nearer field, barn, house, rhythm of many a farmer and of flail.

Sounds of the winter too,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells,
The occasional crunch and cracking of the ice-glare congeal’d over the creek, as it gives way to the sunbeams,
Sometimes with low sigh, sometimes with indignant, obstinate tug and snort.
Winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,
Many a distant strain from cheery railroad train,
The loud laugh of work-people at their meals,
The whispering air—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn.

Locomotive in winter, strong and quick, fierce-throated beauty!
Echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
With all thy lawless music, thy warning ringing bell,
Blowing the steam-whistle, thy madly-whistled laughter, the merry shriek,
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,
Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
Resistless splendid poem, to the free skies unpent and glad and strong—
O the engineer’s joys! To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

I mark the long winters and the isolation,
Stay in the house more than usual, on account of the bitter cold,
Here it is too cold for comfort,
A heavy snowstorm blocking up everything, and keeping us in.
A tremendous winter country this,
The state of the weather, and my cold, etc., have rather blocked me from having my usual enjoyment, so far.

But I expect to make up for it by and by—
Souls, hearts, thoughts, unloos’d, cheerily braving the winter,
The scenery of the snows and ice welcome to me,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, Christmas greeting, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs.

I last winter observed the snow on a spree with the northwest wind. The transparent shadows filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly slanting, curiously sparse but very large flakes of snow. Every snowflake lay where it fell, the multitudinous leaves and branches piled, bulging white, defined by edge-lines of emerald. A faint winter vapor hung a fitting accompaniment around and over the endless whitish spread—and it put me out of conceit of fences and imaginary lines.

Today feels like a precursor of spring, so fresh and sunny,
Winter, relaxing its hold, has already allow’d us a foretaste of spring.
Soon shall the winter’s foil be here,
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt—a little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom, and growth.
Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves,
Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you shall emerge again—
To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns.

NEXT: SPRING

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).