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  • Walt Whitman: Proud Music of the Storm, Part 4

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Part 4I 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.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, 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.

Walt Whitman: Proud Music of the Storm

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Walt Whitman: By Blue Ontario’s Shore

  • Walt Whitman: By Blue Ontario’s Shore

TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.

Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Current Events This Week: January 2023

African Americans by the Numbers

Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents

The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales

TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.

Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Current Events This Week: January 2023

African Americans by the Numbers

Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents

The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales

  • Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?
  • The Twelve Dancing Princesses
  • Current Events This Week: January 2023
  • African Americans by the Numbers
  • Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents
  • The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales