Of Him I Love Day and Night

"Of Him I Love Day and Night" is the first song of Ned Rorem's song cycle Three Calamus Poems, which sets three poems by Walt Whitman.

Date: 1982Composer: Ned RoremText: Walt WhitmanSong Collection: Three Calamus Poems

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Text

Of him I love day and night
by Walt Whitman

Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was dead,
And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he was not in that place,
And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find him,
And I found that every place was a burial place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now),
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement,
the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Manahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living,
And fuller, 0 vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;
And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d,
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse,
be duly render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied.

Sheet Music

Three Calamus Poems

Composer(s): Ned Rorem

Song(s): 1. Of Him I Love Day and Night
2. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
3. To a Common Prostitute

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