{
 "id": "walt-whitman/that-music-always-round-me",
 "title": "That Music Always Round Me",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 243,
 "container": "Whispers of Heavenly Death",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1860,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1860–61 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesofgrass00whituoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "whispers-of-heavenly-death.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 9,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 126,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now the chorus I hear and am elated,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all these I fill myself with,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not think the performers know themselves⁠—but now I think I begin to know them.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}