Proud Music of the Storm - Jake Runestad, performed by Da Camera Singers Edmonton

Proud Music of the Storm, composed by Jake Runestad. Performed by Da Camera Singers Edmonton, Laura Hawley, Artistic Director, dacamerasingers.ca
November, 2022
Text: Walt Whitman
Proud music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber--Why have you seiz'd me?
Ah, from a little child,
Thou knowest, Soul, how to me all sounds became music;
My mother's voice, in lullaby;
The solemn hymns and masses, rousing adoration,
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,
Song of lost love--the torch of youth and life quench'd in despair,
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves;
Give me to hold all sounds,
Fill me with all the voices of the universe,
The tempests, waters, winds-operas and chants-marches and dances,
pour in--for I would take them all.
Then I woke softly,
And pausing, questioning the music of my dream,
I said to my silent, curious Soul,
Go forth,
Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,
What thou hast heard, O Soul, was not the sound of winds,
Nor dream of raging storm,
But, to a new rhythmus fitted for thee,
Poems, bridging the way from Life to Death,
vaguely wafted in night air, uncaught, unwritten,
Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write.