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.
~*~
