To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night. While my sight [that was bound in my eyes]1 unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions.
To the tally of my soul
Set by Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963), no title [ baritone, mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra ], from cantata When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, no. 10 [Sung Text]
Note: this setting is made up of several separate texts.
Text Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), no title, appears in Memories of President Lincoln, in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, no. 17
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View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Sessions
Researcher for this page: Ahmed E. Ismail
[I]1 saw askant the armies, [And]2 I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle-flags; Borne through the smoke of the battles, and pierc'd with missiles, I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody; And at last [but]3 a few shreds left on the staffs, (all in silence,) And the staffs all splinter'd and broken. I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men -- I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war; [But I]4 saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest -- they suffer'd not; The living remain'd and suffer'd -- the mother suffer'd, And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd, And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.
Text Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), no title, appears in Memories of President Lincoln, in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, no. 18
See other settings of this text.
View original text (without footnotes)1 Sessions: "And I"
2 omitted by Sessions
3 Sessions: "for"
4 Sessions: "and we"
Researcher for this page: Ahmed E. Ismail