Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1871-72)

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PROUD MUSIC OF THE STORM.

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¹ PROUD music of the storm!

Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!

Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the moun-
tains!

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 powerless,

Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber—Why have
you seiz'd me?

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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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³ A festival song!

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,

To flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile.

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⁴ Now loud approaching drums!

Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn
but flying? the rout of the baffled?

Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

⁵ (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,

The dirge and desolation of mankind.)

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⁶ Now airs antique and medieval 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 feudal
ages.

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⁷ 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;

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,

As of the far-back days the poets tell—the Paradiso,

The straying thence, the separation long, but now the
wandering done,

The journey done, the journeyman come home,

And Man and Art, with Nature fused again.

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⁸ Tutti! for Earth and Heaven!

The Almighty Leader now for me, for once, has signal'd
with his wand.

⁹ The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,

And all the wives responding.

¹⁰ The tongues of violins!

(I think, O tongues, ye tell this heart, that cannot tell
itself;

This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)

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¹¹ Ah from a little child,

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;)

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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,

The psalm in the country church, or mid the clustering
trees, the open air camp-meeting,

The fiddler in the tavern—the glee, the long-strung
sailor-song,

The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at
dawn.

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¹² 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.

¹³ Across the stage, with pallor on her face, yet lurid
passion,

Stalks Norma, brandishing the dagger in her hand.

¹⁴ I see poor crazed Lucia's eyes' unnatural gleam;

Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel'd.

¹⁵ I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden,

Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his
bride by the hand,

Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn.

¹⁶ To crossing swords, and gray hairs bared to heaven,

The clear, electric base and baritone of the world,

The trombone duo—Libertad forever!

¹⁷ 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.

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¹⁸ Awaking from her woes at last, retriev'd Amina
sings;

Copious as stars, and glad as morning light, the tor-
rents of her joy.

¹⁹ (The teeming lady comes!

The lustrious orb—Venus contralto—the blooming
mother,

Sister of loftiest gods—Alboni's self I hear.)

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²⁰ I hear those odes, symphonies, operas;

I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous'd and
angry people;

I hear Meyerbeer's Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert ;

Gounod's Faust, or Mozart's Don Juan.

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²¹ 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.

²² 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;

I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd
with frantic shouts, as they spin around, turning
always towards Mecca;

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.

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²³ I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the per-
formers wounding each other;

I see the Roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets
throwing and catching their weapons,

As they fall on their knees, and rise again.

²⁴ I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin
calling;

I see the worshippers within, (nor form, nor sermon,
argument nor word,

But silent, strange, devout—rais'd, glowing heads—
ecstatic faces.)

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¹¹ 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,

A band of bayaderes.

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²⁶ Now Asia, Africa leave me—Europe, seizing, inflates
me;

To organs huge, and bands, I hear as from vast con-
courses of voices,

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,

The passionate Agnus Dei or Gloria in Excelsis.

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²⁷ Composers! mighty maestros!

And you, sweet singers of old lands—Soprani! Tenori!
Bassi!

To you a new bard, carolling in the west,

Obeisant, sends his love.

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²⁸ (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.)

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²⁹ I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul's
Cathedral;

Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the sym-
phonies, oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or
Haydn,

The Creation in billows of godhood laves me.

³⁰ 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,

Utter—pour in—for I would take them all.

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³¹ Then I woke softly,

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,

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,

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.

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³² And I said, moreover,

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,

Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy,

Nor German organ majestic—nor vast concourse of
voices—nor layers of harmonies;

Nor strophes of husbands and wives—nor sound of
marching soldiers,

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,

Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write.

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