Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on ‘That Music Always Round Me’)

“That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning,

yet long untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear,

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all of these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings,

I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;

I do not think the performers know themselves-but now I think I begin to know them.” —American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "That Music Always Round Me," in the "Whispers of Heavenly Death" section in Whitman's last edition of Leaves of Grass