by Whitman · Cluster: Birds · Music and Song · Nightingale
Abstract
Morning meditation in which a singing thrush, transmuting grubs and worms into song, becomes a hopeful emblem for the troubled Union’s future.
Connections
Motifs: Birds, Music and Song, Dawn Themes & Concepts: Nationalism and Patriotism, Faith, Natural Order
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine! Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee, This common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d feeding its young, The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic, Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.
There ponder’d, felt I, If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn’d, If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be, Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destin’d to fill the world.