Feinberg/Whitman   Literary File    Poetry File     "Italian Music in Dakota" (1881).  Printed copy
Box 27 Folder 24
See
Prose
"Only Crossing the Delaware."  Box 33Italian Music in Dakota.
BY WALT WHITMAN
["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 fesco'd rooms--not to the audience of the 
opera house;
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 true-born flower or fruit,)
Listens, well pleas'd.