Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleepin… - Walt Whitman

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Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping,
Now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for — I awake, 150
And already a thousand singers — a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me,
Never to die.

O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself — projecting me;
O solitary me, listening — nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you; 155
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d — the fire, the sweet hell within, 160
The unknown want, the destiny of me.