to sound down to somebody

Question

“The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
  Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation.”

Quote by  Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.

What does the writer mean by "sounds it down to me"?
I can read this sentence in two different ways.
1. It (Ya-honk) sounds - or seems - to him like an invitation.
2. It (the gander) sounds it down like an invitation to him.

Which one is correct?

tchrist · Answer

It isn’t "sound down to someone".  Sounding down to someone means something else entirely. This is transitive, "sound something down to someone", in this case an inviting honk.

You just have to parse it. The subject of sounds is he just as it was of says, and the antecedent of he is the wild gander. The object of sounds is it, and the antecedent of it is Ya-honk, which was the object of says.

So this simply means:

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night.
The wild gander says Ya-honk.
The wild gander sounds his Ya-honk down to me like an invitation.

to sound down to somebody

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