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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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PROUD MUSIC OF THE STORM.
1
PROUD music of the storm, |
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, |
Strong hum of forest tree-tops—wind of the mountains, |
Personified dim shapes—you hidden orchestras, |
You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert, |
Blending with Nature's rhythmus all the tongues of nations; |
You chords left as by vast composers—you choruses, |
You formless, free, religious dances—you from the Orient, |
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts, |
You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry, |
Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls, |
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me power-
less,
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Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you seiz'd me? |
2
Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire, |
Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend, |
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber, |
For thee they sing and dance O soul. |
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The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march, |
With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill'd to the brim with love, |
The red-flush'd cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of
friendly faces young and old,
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To flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile. |
Now loud approaching drums, |
Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?
the rout of the baffled?
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Hearest those shouts of a conquering army? |
(Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony, |
The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken'd ruins, the embers
of cities,
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The dirge and desolation of mankind.) |
Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me, |
I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals, |
I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love, |
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages. |
Now the great organ sounds, |
Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth, |
On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend, |
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know, |
Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol
and play, the clouds of heaven above,)
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The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not, |
Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the
rest,
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And with it every instrument in multitudes, |
The players playing, all the world's musicians, |
The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration, |
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals, |
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages, |
And for their solvent setting earth's own diapason, |
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves, |
A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold
renewer,
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As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso, |
The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering
done,
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The journey done, the journeyman come home, |
And man and art with Nature fused again. |
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Tutti! for earth and heaven; |
(The Almighty leader now for once has signal'd with his wand.) |
The manly strophe of the husbands of the world, |
And all the wives responding. |
(I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself, |
This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.) |
3
Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music, |
My mother's voice in lullaby or hymn, |
(The voice, O tender voices, memory's loving voices, |
Last miracle of all, O dearest mother's, sister's, voices;) |
The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav'd corn, |
The measur'd sea-surf beating on the sand, |
The twittering bird, the hawk's sharp scream, |
The wild-fowl's notes at night as flying low migrating north or
south,
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The psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the
open air camp-meeting,
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The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song, |
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn. |
All songs of current lands come sounding round me, |
The German airs of friendship, wine and love, |
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles, |
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, and o'er the rest, |
Italia's peerless compositions. |
Across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion, |
Stalks Norma brandishing the dagger in her hand. |
I see poor crazed Lucia's eyes' unnatural gleam, |
Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel'd. |
I see where Ernani walking the bridal garden, |
Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the
hand,
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Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn. |
To crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven, |
The clear electric base and baritone of the world, |
The trombone duo, Libertad forever! |
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From Spanish chestnut trees' dense shade, |
By old and heavy convent walls a wailing song, |
Song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench'd in despair, |
Song of the dying swan, Fernando's heart is breaking. |
Awaking from her woes at last retriev'd Amina sings, |
Copious as stars and glad as morning light the torrents of her joy. |
The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother, |
Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni's self I hear.) |
4
I hear those odes, symphonies, operas, |
I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous'd and angry
people,
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I hear Meyerbeer's Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert, |
Gounod's Faust, or Mozart's Don Juan. |
I hear the dance-music of all nations, |
The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss, |
The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets. |
I see religious dances old and new, |
I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre, |
I see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the
martial clang of cymbals,
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I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd with frantic
shouts, as they spin around turning always towards Mecca,
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I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs, |
Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing, |
I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies, |
I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet. |
I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers
wounding each other,
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I see the Roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets throwing
and catching their weapons,
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As they fall on their knees and rise again. |
I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling, |
I see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor
word,
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But silent, strange, devout, rais'd, glowing heads, ecstatic faces. |
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I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings, |
The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen, |
The sacred imperial hymns of China, |
To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,) |
Or to Hindu flutes and the fretting twang of the vina, |
5
Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe
seizing inflates me, |
To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of
voices,
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Luther's strong hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott, |
Rossini's Stabat Mater dolorosa, |
Or floating in some high cathedral dim with gorgeous color'd
windows,
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The passionate Agnus Dei or Gloria in Excelsis. |
Composers! mighty maestros! |
And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi! |
To you a new bard caroling in the West, |
(Such led to thee O soul, |
All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee, |
But now it seems to me sound leads o'er all the rest.) |
I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul's cathedral, |
Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies,
oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn,
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The Creation in billows of godhood laves me. |
Give me to hold all sounds, (I madly struggling cry,) |
Fill me with all the voices of the universe, |
Endow me with their throbbings, Nature's also, |
The tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and
dances,
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Utter, pour in, for I would take them all! |
6
And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream, |
And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury, |
And all the songs of sopranos and tenors, |
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And those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor, |
And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs, |
And all the artless plaints of love and grief and death, |
I said to my silent curious soul out of the bed of the slumber-
chamber,
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Come, for I have found the clew I sought so long, |
Let us go forth refresh'd amid the day, |
Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real, |
Nourish'd henceforth by our celestial dream. |
Haply what thou hast heard O soul was not the sound of winds, |
Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk's flapping wings nor
harsh scream,
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Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy, |
Nor German organ majestic, nor vast concourse of voices, nor
layers of harmonies,
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Nor strophes of husbands and wives, nor sound of marching
soldiers,
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Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps, |
But to a new rhythmus fitted for thee, |
Poems bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in
night air, uncaught, unwritten,
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Which let us go forth in the bold day and write. |
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