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Five Poems of Walt Whitman

Song Cycle by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022)

1. Reconciliation
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage,/
   must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, /
   incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
...For my enemy is dead -- a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin -- I draw near;
Bend down down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Reconciliation", appears in Leaves of Grass

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Réconciliation", copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Sometimes with one I love
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Sometimes with one I love, 
I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; 
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love -- 
the pay is certain, one way or another; 
I loved a certain person ardently, my love was not return'd; 
Yet out of that I have written these songs.

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this page: John Versmoren

3. Look down, fair moon
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Look down, fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple;
On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Look down, fair moon", appears in Drum Taps, first published 1965

See other settings of this text.

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

4. Gliding o'er all
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul--not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

5. Gods
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Lover divine and perfect Comrade,
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.

Thou, thou, the Ideal Man,
Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
Complete in body and dilate in spirit,
Be thou my God.

O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)
Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion,
Be thou my God.

Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,
(To break the stagnant tie - thee, thee to free, O soul,)
Be thou my God.

All great ideas, the races' aspirations,
All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,
Be ye my Gods.

Or Time and Space,
Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,
Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,
Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,
Be ye my Gods.

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Gods", appears in Leaves of Grass

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 331
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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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