by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Of him I love day and night
Language: English
Of him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead, And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he was not in that place, And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-places to find him, And I found that every place was a burial place; The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now), The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Manahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living, And fuller, 0 vastly fuller of the dead than of the living; And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age, And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd, And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them, And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied, And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly render'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, I shall be satisfied.
Text Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Silvan Loher (b. 1986), "Of him I love day and night", op. 6 no. 9 [ voice and piano ], from Ten Poems by Walt Whitman, no. 9 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "Of him I love day and night", from Three Calamus Songs, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 15
Word count: 191