The First Frost—Mems
Walt Whitman * Track #198 On Specimen Days
Download "The First Frost—Mems"
Album Specimen Days
- #1The Great Unrest of which We are Part
Walt Whitman
- #2Nature and Democracy—Morality
Walt Whitman
- #3Final Confessions—Literary Tests
Walt Whitman
- #4After Trying a Certain Book
Walt Whitman
- #5At Present Writing—Personal
Walt Whitman
- #6Death of Longfellow
Walt Whitman
- #7Starting Newspapers
Walt Whitman
- #8My Native Sand and Salt Once More
Walt Whitman
- #9An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
Walt Whitman
- #10A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
Walt Whitman
- #11Only a New Ferry Boat
Walt Whitman
- #12A Discovery of Old Age
Walt Whitman
- #13Other Concord Notations
Walt Whitman
- #14Boston Common—More of Emerson
Walt Whitman
- #15Some Old Acquaintances—Memories
Walt Whitman
- #16Millet’s Pictures—Last Items
Walt Whitman
- #17Hot Weather New York
Walt Whitman
- #18Birds—and a Caution
Walt Whitman
- #19Ouster’s Last Rally
Walt Whitman
- #20Samples of my Common-Place Book
Walt Whitman
- #21The Boston of To-Day
Walt Whitman
- #22My Tribute to Four Poets
Walt Whitman
- #23A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit
Walt Whitman
- #24A Week’s Visit to Boston
Walt Whitman
- #25Carlyle from American Points of View
Walt Whitman
- #26Death of Thomas Carlyle
Walt Whitman
- #27The Inhabitants—Good Living
Walt Whitman
- #28The St. Lawrence Line
Walt Whitman
- #29Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay
Walt Whitman
- #30The Savage Saguenay
Walt Whitman
- #31Grand Native Growth
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- #32Capes Eternity and Trinity
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- #33A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada
Walt Whitman
- #34Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
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- #35Sunday with the Insane
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- #36Edgar Poe’s Significance
Walt Whitman
- #37Jaunting to Canada
Walt Whitman
- #38Loafing in the Woods
Walt Whitman
- #39Seeing Niagara to Advantage
Walt Whitman
- #40A Contralto Voice
Walt Whitman
- #41Beethoven’s Septette
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- #42A Hint of Wild Nature
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- #43President Hayes’s Speeches
Walt Whitman
- #44Upon our Own Land
Walt Whitman
- #45An Interviewer’s Item
Walt Whitman
- #46Nights on the Mississippi
Walt Whitman
- #47St. Louis Memoranda
Walt Whitman
- #48The Silent General
Walt Whitman
- #49The Women of the West
Walt Whitman
- #50Prairie Analogies—the Tree Question
Walt Whitman
- #51Mature Summer Days and Night
Walt Whitman
- #52Exposition Building—New City Hall—River-Trip
Walt Whitman
- #53A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
Walt Whitman
- #54Swallows on the River
Walt Whitman
- #55Central Park Walks and Talks
Walt Whitman
- #56Two City Areas Certain Hours
Walt Whitman
- #57Hudson River Sights
Walt Whitman
- #58Walter Dumont and his Medal
Walt Whitman
- #59Up the Hudson to Ulster County
Walt Whitman
- #60An Ulster County Waterfall
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- #61A Yankee Antique
Walt Whitman
- #62Inauguration Ball
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- #63The Weather—Does it Sympathize with These Times?
Walt Whitman
- #64Wounds and Diseases
Walt Whitman
- #65Death of President Lincoln
Walt Whitman
- #66Female Nurses for Soldiers
Walt Whitman
- #67The Inauguration
Walt Whitman
- #68Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War
Walt Whitman
- #69The Capitol by Gas-Light
Walt Whitman
- #70Southern Escapees
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- #71A Model Hospital
Walt Whitman
- #72Boys in the Army
Walt Whitman
- #73Burial of a Lady Nurse
Walt Whitman
- #74The Blue Everywhere
Walt Whitman
- #75Gifts—Money—Discrimination
Walt Whitman
- #76Death of a Hero
Walt Whitman
- #77Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies
Walt Whitman
- #78A Case from Second Bull Run
Walt Whitman
- #79Items from My Note Books
Walt Whitman
- #80Deserters
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- #81A New Army Organization fit for America
Walt Whitman
- #82A Yankee Soldier
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- #83Virginia
Walt Whitman
- #84Summer of 1864
Walt Whitman
- #85Rumors, Changes, Etc.
Walt Whitman
- #86Paying the Bounties
Walt Whitman
- #87Down at the Front II
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- #88A Silent Night Ramble
Walt Whitman
- #89Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
Walt Whitman
- #90Hospital Perplexity
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- #91Soldiers and Talks
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- #92Hospitals Ensemble
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- #93Death of a Wisconsin Officer
Walt Whitman
- #94Cattle Droves about Washington
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- #95Abraham Lincoln
Walt Whitman
- #96Ambulance Processions
Walt Whitman
- #97Heated Term
Walt Whitman
- #98A Cavalry Camp
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- #99The Most Inspiriting of all War’s Shows
Walt Whitman
- #100Battle of Gettysburg
Walt Whitman
- #101Bad Wounds—the Young
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- #102Home-Made Music
Walt Whitman
- #103A New York Soldier
Walt Whitman
- #104A Night Battle over a Week Since
Walt Whitman
- #105The Wounded from Chancellorsville
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- #106My Preparations for Visits
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- #107Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
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- #108Back to Washington
Walt Whitman
- #109Patent-Office Hospital
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- #110An Army Hospital Ward
Walt Whitman
- #111Two Brooklyn Boys
Walt Whitman
- #112A Secesh Brave
Walt Whitman
- #113Sources of Character—Results—1860
Walt Whitman
- #114After First Fredericksburg
Walt Whitman
- #115The White House by Moonlight
Walt Whitman
- #116Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
Walt Whitman
- #117Down at the Front
Walt Whitman
- #118The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
Walt Whitman
- #119Hospital Scenes and Persons
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- #120A Connecticut Case
Walt Whitman
- #121Contemptuous Feeling
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- #122Plays and Operas too
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- #123National Uprising and Volunteering
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- #124Through Eight Years
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- #125Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman
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- #126Broadway Sights
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- #127Opening of the Secession War
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- #128Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
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- #129Two Old Family Interiors
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- #130The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
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- #131Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man
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- #132Growth—Health—Work
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- #133Printing Office—Old Brooklyn
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- #134My First Reading—Lafayette
Walt Whitman
- #135My Passion for Ferries
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- #136The Maternal Homestead
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- #137Answer to an Insisting Friend
Walt Whitman
- #138A Happy Hour’s Command
Walt Whitman
- #139Three Years Summ’d Up
Walt Whitman
- #140The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
Walt Whitman
- #141The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
Walt Whitman
- #142Some Specimen Cases
Walt Whitman
- #143Hospital Scenes—Incidents
Walt Whitman
- #144Two Brothers, One South, One North
Walt Whitman
- #145A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes
Walt Whitman
- #146Union Prisoners South
Walt Whitman
- #147Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
Walt Whitman
- #148By Emerson’s Grave
Walt Whitman
- #149Mississippi Valley Literature
Walt Whitman
- #150Earth’s Most Important Stream
Walt Whitman
- #151America’s Characteristic Landscape
Walt Whitman
- #152The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains
Walt Whitman
- #153The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
Walt Whitman
- #154A Silent Little Follower—the Coreopsis
Walt Whitman
- #155Unfulfill’d Wants—the Arkansas River
Walt Whitman
- #156I Turn South and then East Again
Walt Whitman
- #157Denver Impressions
Walt Whitman
- #158Art Features
Walt Whitman
- #159The Parks
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- #160America’s Back-Bone
Walt Whitman
- #161Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc.
Walt Whitman
- #162New Scenes—New Joys
Walt Whitman
- #163An Egotistical “Find”
Walt Whitman
- #164An Hour on Kenosha Summit
Walt Whitman
- #165On to Denver—A Frontier Incident
Walt Whitman
- #166Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
Walt Whitman
- #167Missouri State
Walt Whitman
- #168In the Sleeper
Walt Whitman
- #169Begin a Long Jaunt West
Walt Whitman
- #170Two Hours on the Minnesota
Walt Whitman
- #171Departing of the Big Steamers
Walt Whitman
- #172Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream
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- #173A Quintette
Walt Whitman
- #174The Oaks and I
Walt Whitman
- #175A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
Walt Whitman
- #176Distant Sounds
Walt Whitman
- #177Mulleins and Mulleins
Walt Whitman
- #178Full-Starr’d Nights
Walt Whitman
- #179Days at J.B.’s—Turf Fires—Spring Songs
Walt Whitman
- #180The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
Walt Whitman
- #181Meeting a Hermit
Walt Whitman
- #182Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
Walt Whitman
- #183Delaware River—Days and Nights
Walt Whitman
- #184A Civility Too Long Neglected
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- #185Hours for the Soul
Walt Whitman
- #186Straw-Color’d and other Psyches
Walt Whitman
- #187Wild Flowers
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- #188A Night Remembrance
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- #189A Specimen Tramp Family
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- #190Manhattan from the Bay
Walt Whitman
- #191Human and Heroic New York
Walt Whitman
- #192Happiness and Raspberries
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- #193Horse-Mint
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- #194Jaunt up the Hudson
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- #195Death of William Cullen Bryant
Walt Whitman
- #196Three of Us
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- #197Bird Whistling
Walt Whitman
- #198The First Frost—Mems
Walt Whitman
- #199Clover and Hay Perfume
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- #200An Unknown
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- #201February Days
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- #202Sundown Lights
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- #203Three Young Men’s Deaths
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- #204A Meadow Lark
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- #205The Common Earth, the Soil
Walt Whitman
- #206An Afternoon Scene
Walt Whitman
- #207Birds and Birds and Birds
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- #208One of the Human Kinks
Walt Whitman
- #209The Gates Opening
Walt Whitman
- #210A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach
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- #211Spring Overtures—Recreations
Walt Whitman
- #212Sea-Shore Fancies
Walt Whitman
- #213In Memory of Thomas Paine
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- #214Autumn Side-Bits
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- #215A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail
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- #216Locusts and Katy-Dids
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- #217The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness
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- #218Crows and Crows
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- #219Colors—A Contrast
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- #220November 8, ’76
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- #221The Lesson of a Tree
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- #222A July Afternoon by the Pond
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- #223Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—the Hermit Thrush
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- #224Summer Sights and Indolences
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- #225Cedar-Apples
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- #226Bumble-Bees
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- #227Birds Migrating at Midnight
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- #228An Early Summer Reveille
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- #229To the Spring and Brook
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- #230New Themes Enter’d Upon
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- #231Entering a Long Farm-Lane
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- #232A Soldier on Lincoln
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- #233Convulsiveness
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- #234Hospitals Closing
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- #235The Grand Review
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- #236Typical Soldiers
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- #237An Interregnum Paragraph
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- #238Calhoun’s Real Monument
Walt Whitman
- #239No Good Portrait of Lincoln
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- #240Some Sad Cases Yet
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- #241Releas’d Union Prisoners from South
Walt Whitman
- #242Western Soldiers
Walt Whitman
- #243The Armies Returning
Walt Whitman
- #244Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
Walt Whitman
- #245Scene at the Capitol
Walt Whitman
- #246Sherman’s Army Jubilation—its Sudden Stoppage
Walt Whitman
The First Frost—Mems by Walt Whitman
Performed by
Walt WhitmanThe First Frost—Mems Annotated
Where I was stopping I saw the first palpable frost, on my sunrise walk, October 6; all over the yet-green spread a light blue-gray veil, giving a new show to the entire landscape. I had but little time to notice it, for the sun rose cloudless and mellow-warm, and as I returned along the lane it had turn'd to glittering patches of wet. As I walk I notice the bursting pods of wild-cotton, (Indian hemp they call it here,) with flossy-silky contents, and dark red-brown seeds—a startled rabbit—I pull a handful of the balsamic life-ever-lasting and stuff it down in my trowsers-pocket for scent.