WALT WHITMAN’S LEAVES OF GRASS for Solo Soprano, Chorus and Orchestra by David Stern

1. Selections from Clef Poem (1856)

THIS night I am happy,

As I watch the stars shining, I think a 

thought of the clef of the universes, and 

of the future.

I do not know what follows the death of my body,

But I know well that whatever it is, it is best for 

me,

And I know well that what is really Me shall live 

just as much as before.

I suppose I am to be eligible to visit the stars,

I suppose I shall have myriads of new experiences  
—and that the experience of this earth will  
prove only one out of myriads;

And I believe I have this night thought a thought  
of the clef of eternity.

2. I Dream’d in a Dream (1860)

I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the

attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust

love—it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of

that city,

And in all their looks and words.

3. A Clear Midnight (1881)

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes  
thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

4. Selections from Song of the Universal

First published in newspapers in 1874,

published in Leaves of Grass edition of 1882

COME, said the Muse,

Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,

Sing me the Universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,

Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,

Enclosed and safe within its central heart,

Nestles the seed Perfection.

O the blest eyes! the happy hearts!

That see—that know the guiding thread so fine,

Along the mighty labyrinth!

All, all for immortality!

Love, like the light, silently wrapping all!

Nature’s amelioration blessing all!

The blossoms, fruits of ages—orchards divine and certain;

Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.

Give me, O God, to sing that thought!

Give me—give him or her I love this quenchless faith,

In Thy ensemble—whatever else withheld, withhold not from us,

Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in time and space,

Health, peace, salvation universal.

5. Reconciliation

First published in Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865-1866)

published in Leaves of Grass edition of 1867

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!

Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in

time be utterly lost;

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly

softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:

…For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;

I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I

draw near;

I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face

in the coffin.

6. Selections from Song of Myself (1855)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth

much?

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin

of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions

of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look

through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in

books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.