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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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ITALIAN MUSIC IN DAKOTA.
[ "The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard." ]
THROUGH the soft evening air enwinding all, |
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, |
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes, |
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, |
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, |
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, |
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera
house,
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Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, |
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish, |
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto; ) |
Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, |
Music, Italian music in Dakota. |
While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm, |
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, |
Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd, |
(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) |
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