Walt Whitman: "Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore"

Uncle Walt Whitman

Song of Myself: Section 11

Music: 

Concerto for Bass Tuba and Orchestra in F Minor, 

IRV. 92: II. Romanza 

by 

Vaughan Williams

conducted by

André Previn

YouTube Direct Link: https://youtu.be/edmZLBeNAIY

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,

Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;

Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,

She hides handsome and richly drest 

aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?

Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

You splash in the water there, 

yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach 

came the twenty-ninth bather,

The rest did not see her, 

but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, 

it ran from their long hair,

Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, 

their white bellies bulge to the sun, 

they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

They do not know who puffs and declines 

with pendant and bending arch,

They do not think whom they souse with spray.

~*~