O soul, all senses, shows, and objects lead to thee,
But now it seems to me sound leads o’er all the rest.
Music is a great language, supplying in certain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply. Music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual, nothing more sensuous—a god, yet completely human—advances, prevails, holds highest place. 

The subtlest spirit of a nation is expressed through its music,
And the music acts reciprocally on the nation’s very soul,
A taste for music, when widely distributed among a people, is one of the surest indications of their moral purity, amiability, and refinement.
Music soothes us, and, like a mother, draws us to her breast,
And we fall asleep and we forget our difficulties.

Ah from a little child,
Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music—
The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn,
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep,
The psalm in the country church,
Or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting,
The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,
The inimitable music of the mother’s voice in lullaby,
Last miracle of all, O dearest mother’s, sister’s, voices,
O tender voices, memory’s loving voices,
My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn.

Now I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice—the revelation of the singing voice! What a strange charm there is in the human voice—so far ahead of instruments, to produce certain effects. What an indescribable volume of delight the recesses of the soul can bear from the sound of the honied perfection of the human voice, the great, overwhelming, touching human voice—its throbbing, flowing, pulsing qualities. I am particularly susceptible to voices of range, magnetism—mellow, persuading voices.

The trained soprano—a soprano that lithely overleaps the stars,
At intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves.
First preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude,
The lone singer, in voice surpassing all, sang forth wonderful, causing tears,
She convulsed me like the climax of my love-grip.

In the fresh breeze and the chiaroscuro of the night,
The air was borne by a rich, liquid-full contralto, firm and unhurried, with long pauses,
She used to sweep me away as with whirlwinds,
She roused whirlwinds of feeling within me.

A tenor, strong, fills me, the orbed parting of whose mouth shall lift over my head the sluices of all the delight yet discovered for our race, rising through the universe, ascending with power and health, pouring and filling me full.
Vast, pure tenor, with glad notes of daybreak, large and fresh as the creation—identity of the creative power itself—how much from thee! The revelation of the singing voice from thee! How through those strains distill’d, the rapt ears, the soul of me, absorbing freedom’s and love’s and faith’s unloos’d cantabile.

The clear electric bass and baritone of the world,
Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong,
The like whereof was never heard;
So firm, so liquid-soft, that tremulous, manly timbre!

Oh! the true bass is the most precious of all voices because the rarest of all,
Now, firm and unbroken, it spreads like an ocean around us,
Pure and vast, that voice now rises, as on clouds, to the heaven where it claims audience,
A transparent bass shuddering lusciously under and through the universe.

I listen to the different voices,
Occupants and joyous vibraters of space, winding in and out,
Striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion.
The perfect singing voice—deepest of all to me the lesson—trial and test of all—
Such voices—do they not justify all—explain all?

Ah, welcome that I know not the mere language of the earthly words in which the melody is embodied, as all words are mean before the language of true music. No substantive or noun, no figure or image, stands for the beautiful mystery.

The chorus I hear and am elated, it is a grand opera,
The thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
Ah this indeed is music—this suits me,
Such singing and strong rich music always give me the greatest pleasure,
I could listen to their singing all night.

Then to a loftier strain,
Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,
All songs of current lands come sounding round me.
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours,
A festival song, to flutes’ clear notes and sounding harps’ cantabile.

Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me,
The musical recitative of old poems,
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages.
I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love—
The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,
A wailing song, song of lost love—
For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.

Passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,
Sublime hymns, wide as the orbit of suns, reliable as immortality,
Chanted hymns whose tremendous sentiment uncage in my breast a thousand wide-winged strengths and unknown ardors and terrible ecstasies,
Or calmly sailing me all day on a bright river—
All these I fill myself with.

I do not think the performers know themselves,
But now I think I begin to know them;
Sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi!
To you a new bard caroling in the West,
Obeisant sends his love.

I hear already the bustle of instruments,
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments, the baton has given the signal,
The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,
Stately, maestoso, wild-pealing, high-trilling, distant.

The conductor beats time and all the performers follow him, every instrument in multitudes,
They will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them—
The violins, the bugles, the flutes, the drums, the bass fiddles, the violincellos,
The funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins,
The triumphant tutti of victorious horns,
The trill of a thousand clear cornets,
The scream of the octave flute and strike of triangles—
Hark, how the cymbals clang!

I hear the violoncello—
‘Tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,
The tongues of violins—
I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself,
This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself;
It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly—every motion a study.

Hark, some wild trumpeter vibrates capricious tunes tonight,
I hear the key’d cornet, echoing, pealing,
It glides quickly in through my ears.
In cornets’ notes, electric, pensive, turbulent,
I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings,
Meanings unknown before, strangely fitting,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here—
The cornet, that puts the call of daylight and the laugh of hope into voice, or else the echo of sunset.

Blow mystic trumpeter, free and clear, I follow thee,
Listening alert I catch thy notes, thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
Haply in thee resounds some dead composer, 
That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,
Gives out to no one’s ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,
That I may thee translate.

Thy fearful music-song, wild player,
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,
Takes away all cheering light, all hope, brings every sight of fear,
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast,
Startling me with the overture of some unnamable horror,
Stabbing my heart with myriads of forked distractions more furious than hail or lightning,
The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder—
I hear the cries for help!

Now trumpeter for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet—
O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,
Thy song—haply a trumpet-note for heroes—expands my numb’d imbonded spirit,
Thou freest, launchest me, thou melt’st my heart, my brain.

I hear the great drums pounding, and the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums strikes me through and through;
The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music—
Beat! beat! drums! Then rattle quicker, heavier drums!
Cry all-alive! and wake sleepers from their bedrooms in the brain and put coals of spunk in the flimsiest tender rags of cowards.

Now the solemn-sweet pipes of the organ sound, president over the rest,
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ,
From respect of whom all keep still,
And know in that presence their best feats would be an impertinence.
Loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close, tremulous,
While underneath, the strong bass stands, and its pulsations intermit not,
Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest.

My life was so saturated with the emotions, raptures, uplifts, of such musical experiences that it would be surprising indeed if all my work had not been colored by them. A real musician running through “Leaves of Grass”—a philosopher musician—could put his finger on this and that anywhere in the text no doubt as indicating the activity of the influences I have spoken of. But I knew nothing about music, simply took it in, enjoyed it, from the human side; did not trouble myself to explain or analyze.

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,
It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums,
It is nearer and farther than they.
Do you suppose that in these, touched by the fine players of the world, are the primary of the feelings that move you?
No; there is something else,
This something is in the soul and eludes description.
Do you know what music does to the soul? 
Music, the most spiritual of sensuous enjoyments, gives it some faint sign of the harmony and measure that are of its essence.

How delicious the proportion between the kinds of instruments,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
All, all, so balanced and their results merging into each other, here perfect,
Making the hearer’s pulses stop for ecstasy and awe.

Nature, acknowledging rapport however far remov’d,
As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,
Listens well pleas’d.

I looked upon these concerts in the open air—the nights so beautiful, calm—as bright gleams athwart the sad history of that time.
I have heard bits here and there at concerts, from orchestras, bands, which have astonished, ravished me,
Like the discovery of a new world;
The masters keep on coming and coming again,
A new world—a liquid world—rushes like a torrent through you,
From this night you date a new era in your development,
And, for the first time, receive your ideas of what the divine art of music really is.

Never did music more sink into and soothe and fill me,
Never so prove its soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement.
I allow’d myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself,
Dilating me beyond time and air,
I was carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders,
Putting me through the flights of all the passions.

The music will sound and the dancers’ feet presently tread,
The dancers dance, the musicians play for them.
I hear the dance-music of all nations,
The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss,
The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle.

Joy of sweet music, joy of the dancers, dancing and whirling like mad,
Why have you seiz’d me?
Come forward O my soul,
Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,
For thee they sing and dance, O my soul.

I am a dance—play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!
It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness.
An infinite chorus and orchestrium, wide as the orbit of Uranus,
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
True as the hours of the day, and filling my capacities to receive,
As thoroughly as the sea fills its scooped out sands.

O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them,
It sails me all day on a bright river,
I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,
Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
and that we call Being.

I hear all sounds running together,
The players playing, all the world’s musicians,
The German airs of friendship, wine and love,
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles,
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, Italia’s peerless compositions.

Nature’s music also, earth’s own diapason,
Personified dim shapes—you hidden orchestras,
You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,
Tutti! for earth and heaven, the tempests, waters, winds,
A colossal volume of harmony, in which the thunder might roll in its proper place,
Blending with nature’s rhythmus all the tongues of nations—
And the cow crunching the grass,
I can hear its melodious crunch, crunch, its bovine music,
The lips, soul, of song as much there as anywhere.

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear,
But now I hear and am elated,
O glad, exulting, culminating song!
A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes,
Measureless sound—a sublime orchestra of a myriad orchestras,
From some far shore the final chorus sounding.

Give me to hold all sounds! I madly struggling cry,
Utter, pour in, for I would take them all,
Fill me with all the voices of the universe,
Endow me with their throbbings,
A new composite orchestra fused or following,
Binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer,
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope.

O strain musical flowing through ages and continents,
For the ear joyously sounding, now reaching hither,
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I take to your reckless and composite chords,  left as by vast composers,
Add to them, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward—
Marches of victory—man disenthral’d—the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy!

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