Salut au Monde 3 by Walt Whitman

What do you hear Walt Whitman?

I hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife singing,

I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early

in the day,

I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,

I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to

the rebeck and guitar,

I hear continual echoes from the Thames,

I hear fierce French liberty songs,

I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,

I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with

the showers of their terrible clouds,

I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the

breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,

I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,

I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,

I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear

the responsive base and soprano,

I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting to sea

at Okotsk,

I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the

husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten'd together

with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,

I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of

the Romans,

I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful

God the Christ,

I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,

adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three

thousand years ago.