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
A Free Song
Cantata by William Howard Schuman (1910 - 1992)
1. Long, too long America [sung text checked 1 time]
Note: this is a multi-text setting
Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Long, too long America", appears in Drum Taps
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View original text (without footnotes)1 Schuman: "cries"
2 omitted by Schuman.
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Look down, fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with [their]1 arms toss'd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Look down, fair moon", appears in Drum Taps, first published 1965
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Drum-Taps, ed. by Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, The Walt Whitman Archive
1 omitted by Rands.Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
2. Song of the banner  [sung text checked 1 time]
O, a new song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind's voice, By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, Where the banner at daybreak is flapping. We hear and see not strips of cloth alone; We hear again the tramp of armies, We hear the drums beat, and the trumpets blowing, We hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, We hear liberty.
The text shown is a variant of another text. [ View differences ]
It is based on
- a text in English by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Song of the Banner at Daybreak", appears in Drum Taps
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Note: based on stanzas 1 and 12Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]