The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Italian Music in Dakota
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1879 and 1881
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00003
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: "Italian Music in Dakota" was published first in the 1881–82 edition of Leaves of Grass. This manuscript was likely composed between 1879 and 1881, after Whitman took a trip to the West (though not the Dakota Territory) and before the poem was published.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray, Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, Andy Jewell, Jennifer R. Overkamp, Kenneth Price, and Brett Barney
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^Italian Music in Dakota
By Walt Whitman
small type ¶
["The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard."]
[paper glued]
Through the soft evening air, enwinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, ^endless wilds,
Ray'd in the limpid, yellow slanting
sundown,
From In dulcet strains, in flutes' & cornets' notes,
Ray'd in the limpid, yellow, slanting sundown;
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,
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(Yet ^strangely fitting
thee, O
nNature, even here—
mean-
ings
unknown before,
Subtler than ever—more harmony—as if born
here—related here,
[paper glued]
Not to the
citys
frescoed rooms—not
to the
audience of the opera house,
Sounds, songs, trills, wandering strains, as
really
home return'd
here at home;
Sonnambula's innocent love—trios,
with
Norma's anguish,
And thy extatic c[o?]horus Poliuto;)
[paper glued]
Ray'd in the limpid, yellow slanting sundown,
Music—Italian music in Dakota.
[paper glued]
blank line
While Nature, sovereign of this
gnarled realm,
Lurking in
some his
hidden, barbaric, grim
recesses,
(Acknowledging rapport, however far‑removed,
(As some old root, or soil of earth,
its
own true-born flower or fruit,
Listens, well-pleased,
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