Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from [crises]1 of anguish,
[    advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?) ]2

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Schuman: "cries"
² omitted by Schuman.

Text Authorship:

• by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Long, too long America", appears in Drum Taps [author's text checked 1 time 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):

[ None yet in the database ]

This text (or a part of it) is used in a work

• by William Howard Schuman (1910 - 1992), "Long, too long America", published 1943 [mixed chorus and 2 pianos or orchestra], from the cantata A Free Song, no. 1, cantata.
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2010-10-22
Line count: 6
Word count: 65