by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
A song of joys See original
Language: English
O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music -- full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments -- full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals -- O for the swiftness
and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!
O the joy of my spirit -- it is uncaged -- it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.
O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle,
the laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
...
Composition:
- Set to music by Simon Sargon (b. 1938), "A song of joys", 1995, stanzas 1-4 [ baritone, horn, piano ], from A Clear Midnight: Six Songs set to Poems of Walt Whitman for Baritone, Horn, and Piano, no. 1
Text Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "A song of joys"
See other settings of this text.
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2008-07-12
Line count: 177
Word count: 1534