University of Virginia Library

4  What do you hear, Walt Whitman?
5  I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife      singing;
I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of      animals early in the day;
I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East      Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the      wild horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chest-     nut shade, to the rebeck and guitar;
I hear continual echoes from the Thames;
I hear fierce French liberty songs;
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recita-     tive of old poems;
I hear the Virginia plantation chorus of negroes, of a      harvest night, in the glare of pine knots;
I hear the strong baritone of the 'long-shore-men of      Mannahatta;
I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and sing-     ing;
I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-     west lakes;
I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike      the grain and grass with the showers of their      terrible clouds;
I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively      falling on the breast of the black venerable vast      mother, the Nile;
I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of      Kanada;
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the      bells of the mule;
I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the      mosque;
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their      churches — I hear the responsive base and      soprano;
I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-hair'd      Irish grand-parents, when they learn the death      of their grandson;
I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice,      putting to sea at Okotsk;
I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves      march on — as the husky gangs pass on by twos      and threes, fasten'd together with wrist-chains      and ankle-chains;
I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment       — I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs through      the air;
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the      strong legends of the Romans;
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of      the beautiful God, the Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the      loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this      day from poets who wrote three thousand years      ago.