# Italian Music in Dakota.

BY WALT WHITMAN.

The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.

Through the soft evening air, enwinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,
Yet strangely fitting, this is Nature, even here—meanings
unknown before,
Subtler than ever—more harmony—as if born here, related here,
Not to the city's frescoed rooms—not to the audience of the
opera house!

Sounds, songs, trills, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love—trios, with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus, *Poulus*
Ray'd in the limpid, yellow, slanting sundown,
Music—Italian music in Dakota.

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarly realm,
Lurking in hidden, barbaric, grim recesses,
Acknowledging rapport, however far removed,
(As some old root, or soil of earth, its true-born flower or fruit)
Listens, well pleased.