Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science! (Whitman, set by H. Norris) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
  
Yet again, lo! the Soul -- above all science;
For it, has History gather'd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
  
In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it, the Real to the Ideal tends.
  
For it, the mystic evolution;
Not the right only justified -- what we call evil also justified.
  
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge, festering trunk -- from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge, and joy -- joy universal.
  
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority -- the varied, countless frauds of men and States,
  
Electric, antiseptic yet -- cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.

Authorship

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Song of the Universal

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

[ None yet in the database ]

Text is used as part of a longer work

Homer Albert Norris (1860?5-1920)

The Flight of the Eagle

full setting text

Date added to the website: 2009-02-11.

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