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 teeming lady comes, The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother, 4 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, 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, 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. I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers 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. 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. I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings, To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,) A band of bayaderes. 5 Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me, To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses 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. Composers! mighty maestros! And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi ! Obeisant sends his love. (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, 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, Utter, pour in, for I would take them all! Then I woke softly, 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, 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 slumberchamber, 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, 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. PASSAGE TO INDIA. INGING my days, SING I Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) The New by its mighty railroad spann'd, The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul, The Past- the dark unfathom'd retrospect ! The teeming gulf-the sleepers and the shadows! The past the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past? (As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.) Passage O soul to India! 2 Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables. Not you alone proud truths of the world, Nor you alone ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables, The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun! O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold! Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams! You too with joy I sing. Passage to India ! Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first? The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, A worship new I sing, You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul. Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain, I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd, I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie's leading the van,, I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance, I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd, In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers, I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steamwhistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world, I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes, I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains, I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas, I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base, I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river, I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines, Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows, Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, The road between Europe and Asia. (Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream! Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.) Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead, Over my mood stealing and spreading they come, Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky. Along all history, down the slopes, As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, A ceaseless thought, a varied train-lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise, The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions; |