This Walt Whitman Poem

By invitation of Dartmouth seniors, who apparently hoped to outrage the faculty with the poet's unconventionality, Walt Whitman came to Hanover in June 1872 to deliver the Commencement poem in Hanover's White Church. The poem, "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," is excerpted below in the first two of seven stanzas. Witnesses say the poet's voice was so muffled that he was scarcely audible even to the audience in the front rows; one listener grumbled that, had he been able to hear the poem, he probably wouldn't have understood it at any rate.

As a strong bird on pinions free, Joyous, the amplest spaces heaven-ward, cleaving, Such be the thought I'd think of thee America, Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee. The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee not, Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, Nor rhyme, nor the classics, fane of foreign court or indoor library; But an odor I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois prairie, With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from. Texas uplands, or Florida's glades, Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron, With presentiment of Yellowstone's scenes, or yosemite, And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound, That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

The issuance from Whitman's yawp was inaudible.