s: To go to battle--to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!


s: To see men fall and die and not complain!


s: To taste the savage taste of blood--to be so devilish!


s: To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.


s: O the whaleman's joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!


s: I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,


s: I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his


s: O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling,


s: Again I see him rise to breathe, we row close again,


s: O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!


s: My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,


s: O ripen'd joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!


s: What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more


s: What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?


s: To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,


s: To lead America--to quell America with a great tongue.


s: Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,


s: Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, Iowan's,


s: Kansian's, Missourian's, Oregonese' joys!


s: To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,


s: To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,


s: O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,


s: The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,


s: To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying


s: To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,


s: To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,


s: Knowist thou the excellent joys of youth?


s: Knowist thou the joys of pensive thought?


s: Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?


s: Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space?


s: Prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife,


s: Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.


s: O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,


s: No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,


s: To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving


s: And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.


s: For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death!


s: My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,


s: How it is I know not--yet behold! the something which obeys none


s: It is offensive, never defensive--yet how magnetic it draws.


s: O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!


s: To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!


s: To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!


s: To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with


s: To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,


s: O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!


s: Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,


s: Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades,


s: Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,


s: Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,


s: Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,


s: Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and


s: Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,


s: Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,


s: Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,


s: Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,


s: Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,


s: Lands of iron--lands of the make of the axe.


s: The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,


s: The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,


s: The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,


s: The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;


s: The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,


s: Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of


s: The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,


s: The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,


s: The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their


s: The hook'd arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,


s: The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail'd,


s: Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,


s: The echoes resounding through the vacant building:


s: The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,


s: The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the


s: The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the


s: The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,


s: The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the


s: The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors


s: The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,


s: The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,


s: The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,


s: The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,


s: The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,


s: The siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty,


s: The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,


s: The power of personality just or unjust.


s: What invigorates life invigorates death,


s: And the dead advance as much as the living advance,


s: And the future is no more uncertain than the present,


s: For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the


s: And nothing endures but personal qualities.


s: Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,


s: All does very well till one flash of defiance.


s: A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,


s: If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the


s: The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd


s: Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the


s: Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops


s: selling goods from the rest of the earth,


s: Nor the place of the most numerous population.


s: Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,


s: Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,


s: Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,


s: Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,


s: Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,


s: Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,


s: Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,


s: Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,


s: Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,


s: How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!


s: How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a


s: All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;


s: What is your money-making now? what can it do now?


s: Where are your cavils about the soul now?


s: There is the mine, there are the miners,


s: What always served and always serves is at hand.


s: Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,


s: Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,


s: Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose


s: Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the


s: Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough


s: Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,


s: For the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages,


s: Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.


s: (Whom have you slaughter'd lately European headsman?


s: Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)


s: I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,


s: I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,


s: The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,


s: I see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe,


s: I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,


s: I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race,


s: (America! I do not vaunt my love for you,


s: The solid forest gives fluid utterances,


s: Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable,


s: Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,


s: Work-box, chest, string'd instrument, boat, frame, and what not,


s: Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,


s: Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that


s: Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly


s: Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,


s: Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,


s: The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the


s: The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the


s: The shape measur'd, saw'd, jack'd, join'd, stain'd,


s: The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,


s: The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,


s: The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and


s: woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman,


s: murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion'd arms,


s: Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,


s: The door passing the dissever'd friend flush'd and in haste,


s: The door that admits good news and bad news,


s: The door whence the son left home confident and puff'd up,


s: The door he enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence,


s: diseas'd, broken down, without innocence, without means.


s: She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,


s: Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle to


s: Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,


s: Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,


s: Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.


s: How near his work is holding him to God,


s: The loving Laborer through space and time.)


s: After all not to create only, or found only,


s: But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,


s: To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,


s: To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,


s: Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,


s: To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,


s: These also are the lessons of our New World;


s: While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!


s: Long and long has the grass been growing,


s: Long and long has the rain been falling,


s: Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,


s: Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,


s: The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles,


s: For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain


s: Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination,


s: Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,


s: She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,


s: I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance,


s: I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,


s: associations, magnetize and hold on to her?


s: I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,


s: The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's


s: Ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain,


s: Calliope's call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,


s: Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,


s: Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its


s: Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and


s: Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation;


s: Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on,


s: And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.


s: By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,


s: She's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware!


s: To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant


s: In liberty's name welcome immortal! clasp hands,


s: And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.


s: Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,


s: I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,


s: And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,


s: Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same,


s: Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral,


s: More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,


s: We plan even now to raise, beyond them all,


s: Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,


s: A keep for life for practical invention.


s: Around a palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,


s: Earth's modern wonder, history's seven outstripping,


s: High rising tier on tier with glass and iron facades,


s: Gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfulest hues,


s: Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson,


s: Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner Freedom,


s: The banners of the States and flags of every land,


s: A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.


s: Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.


s: Not only all the world of works, trade, products,


s: But all the workmen of the world here to be represented.


s: Here shall you trace in flowing operation,


s: You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a


s: You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,


s: In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated--in


s: another animals, animal life and development.


s: One stately house shall be the music house,


s: Others for other arts--learning, the sciences, shall all be here,


s: Shall ever here confront the laboring many,


s: With precious benefits to both, glory to all,


s: And here shall ye inhabit powerful Matrons!


s: In your vast state vaster than all the old,


s: Echoed through long, long centuries to come,


s: To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes,


s: Away with themes of war! away with war itself!


s: Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of


s: That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for


s: And in its stead speed industry's campaigns,


s: Thy pennants labor, loosen'd to the breeze,


s: Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts,


s: With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.


s: I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art,


s: To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,


s: To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers,


s: To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,


s: To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,


s: And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.


s: I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here,


s: All occupations, duties broad and close,


s: Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,


s: The old, old practical burdens, interests, joys,


s: The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,


s: The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,


s: Food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it,


s: These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable,


s: This earth all spann'd with iron rails, with lines of steamships


s: Our own rondure, the current globe I bring.


s: Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,


s: With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,


s: Rounded by thee in one--one common orbic language,


s: Behold, America! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!)


s: For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;


s: Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,


s: And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;


s: See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the


s: See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port,


s: See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke.


s: Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,


s: Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,


s: Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen,


s: How the ash writhes under those muscular arms!


s: There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,


s: Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges,


s: Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents,


s: Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising,


s: See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.


s: Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,


s: Thy wealthy daughter-states, Eastern and Western,


s: Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold


s: Ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines,


s: City and State, North, South, item and aggregate,


s: Protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all!


s: Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure,


s: Delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,)


s: Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably


s: In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee flag,


s: Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of


s: Now here and these and hence in peace, all thine O Flag!


s: And here and hence for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!


s: None separate from thee--henceforth One only, we and thou,


s: A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,


s: Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.


s: Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,


s: Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,


s: In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,


s: With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse,


s: I heard the might tree its death-chant chanting.


s: The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,


s: The quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,


s: Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,


s: Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,


s: And all you venerable and innocent joys,


s: Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,


s: Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,


s: With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight,


s: We welcome what we wrought for through the past,


s: For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,


s: For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.'


s: Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,


s: As if the heirs, the deities of the West,


s: Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house,


s: (Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and


s: To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,


s: You promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.


s: You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and


s: For man of you, your characteristic race,


s: Here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others' formulas heed,)


s: In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the


s: The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,


s: All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,


s: From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah,


s: To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,


s: The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the


s: The flashing and golden pageant of California,


s: The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,


s: The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south,


s: At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,


s: A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere,


s: Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the


s: And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.


s: But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore,


s: (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)


s: I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,


s: Promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race.


s: The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,


s: Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,


s: I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,


s: Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of


s: In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find


s: The learn'd, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,


s: A man like me and never the usual terms.


s: I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my


s: I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.


s: If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as


s: cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?


s: Is it you then that thought yourself less?


s: Is it you that thought the President greater than you?


s: Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?


s: Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)


s: Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,


s: It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether


s: I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.


s: Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,


s: in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,


s: The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,


s: The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,


s: The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.


s: Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,


s: Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,


s: Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,


s: All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,


s: None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.


s: I bring what you much need yet always have,


s: Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,


s: I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but


s: There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,


s: It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,


s: You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,


s: department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,


s: The sun and stars that float in the open air,


s: The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the


s: greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,


s: What have you reckon'd them for, camerado?


s: Have you reckon'd them for your trade or farm-work? or for the


s: Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?


s: Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?


s: Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?


s: Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or


s: We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,


s: I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,


s: I am this day just as much in love with them as you,


s: Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,


s: The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,


s: Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the


s: going and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you.


s: Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,


s: reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,


s: All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,


s: (Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of


s: sweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the


s: Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is


s: Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul?


s: Strange and hard that paradox true I give,


s: Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.


s: House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,


s: Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men


s: around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the


s: The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the


s: bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars


s: of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,


s: Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,


s: steam-saws, the great mills and factories,


s: The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the


s: sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the


s: butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,


s: The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the


s: counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making


s: Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,


s: distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,


s: ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,


s: The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,


s: The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the


s: scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul,


s: and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,


s: Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and


s: The men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters,


s: The hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard,


s: These shows all near you by day and night--workman! whoever you


s: In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,


s: In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things,


s: I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,


s: But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to.


s: Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,


s: Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,


s: nighest neighbor--woman in mother, sister, wife,


s: And all else giving place to men and women like you.


s: When the psalm sings instead of the singer,


s: When the script preaches instead of the preacher,


s: I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do


s: A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,


s: Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?


s: No, the real words are more delicious than they.


s: Human bodies are words, myriads of words,


s: (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's,


s: Air, soil, water, fire--those are words,


s: I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with


s: Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would


s: air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?


s: A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,


s: The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,


s: Amelioration is one of the earth's words,


s: The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,


s: I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?


s: To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?


s: Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?


s: Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,


s: Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,


s: Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,


s: Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.


s: The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,


s: Underneath these possessing words that never fall.


s: With her ample back towards every beholder,


s: With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age,


s: Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,


s: Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.


s: Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,


s: Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,


s: Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and


s: The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,


s: Swift, glad, content, unbereav'd, nothing losing,


s: Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,


s: Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,


s: The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.


s: For none more than you are the present and the past,


s: Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the


s: No one can acquire for another--not one,


s: The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,


s: The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,


s: The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,


s: The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,


s: The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,


s: And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or


s: There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the


s: I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which


s: I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,


s: I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,


s: When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,


s: My breath will not be obedient to its organs,


s: The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best,


s: It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer,


s: Things are not dismiss'd from the places they held before,


s: The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before,


s: No reasoning, no proof has establish'd it,


s: These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls,


s: (If they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then?


s: Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!


s: Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,


s: It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use,


s: I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall,


s: I swear to you they will understand you and justify you,


s: Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action,


s: The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and


s: Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,


s: Enclosed and safe within its central heart,


s: As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,


s: Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,


s: For it has history gather'd like husks around the globe,


s: For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.


s: For it the partial to the permanent flowing,


s: Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.


s: From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,


s: Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.


s: Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,


s: Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,


s: An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,


s: Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,


s: To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,


s: Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,


s: From some far shore the final chorus sounding.


s: That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,


s: For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality,


s: For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.


s: The measure'd faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,


s: Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,


s: Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,


s: Love like the light silently wrapping all,


s: The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,


s: Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,


s: In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,


s: Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,


s: And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream,


s: Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,


s: Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?


s: We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,


s: We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,


s: So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,


s: We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,


s: Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,


s: Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,


s: Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental


s: Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,


s: By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,


s: Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,


s: Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?


s: Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,


s: All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,


s: We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,


s: Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,


s: O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!


s: Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,


s: Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding


s: Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,


s: Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,


s: troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,


s: Your true soul and body appear before me.


s: They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,


s: farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,


s: I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.


s: I should have made my way straight to you long ago,


s: I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,


s: None has understood you, but I understand you,


s: I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,


s: beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.


s: From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,


s: O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!


s: You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself


s: Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,


s: What you have done returns already in mockeries,


s: (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in


s: Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,


s: I pursue you where none else has pursued you,


s: Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the


s: accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from


s: yourself, they do not conceal you from me,


s: The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,


s: premature death, all these I part aside.


s: There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,


s: Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!


s: These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,


s: These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense


s: Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are


s: Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the


s: Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?


s: Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?


s: Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd,


s: Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,


s: Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.


s: And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,


s: But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with


s: And I send these words to Paris with my love,


s: And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,


s: For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,


s: O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be


s: O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,


s: It reaches hither, it swells me to Joyful madness,


s: I will run transpose it in words, to justify


s: I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.


s: To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a


s: But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous


s: Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws,


s: I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was


s: (Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?


s: Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all


s: Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,


s: I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern


s: What others give as duties I give as living impulses,


s: (Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)


s: Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse


s: Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?


s: What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender


s: I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but


s: I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,


s: I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.


s: O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,


s: I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a


s: Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.


s: I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,


s: I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the


s: (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,


s: The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with


s: immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,


s: (Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your


s: Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)


s: Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would


s: With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages,


s: This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.


s: O but it is not the years--it is I, it is You,


s: We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,


s: We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily


s: The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,


s: Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.


s: As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)


s: I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,


s: (Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?


s: Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)


s: I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,


s: I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demigod,


s: I assert that all past days were what they must have been,


s: And that they could no-how have been better than they were,


s: And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,


s: And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.


s: In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,


s: I know that the past was great and the future will be great,


s: And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,


s: (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man's sake,


s: And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races


s: Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,


s: Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,


s: Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,


s: Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,


s: When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,


s: When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and


s: heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,


s: When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the


s: When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,


s: When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,


s: When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and


s: foot-standers, when the mass is densest,


s: When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes


s: gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,


s: When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves


s: When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands


s: Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.


s: Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite


s: The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,


s: Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,


s: Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,


s: With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,


s: Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself


s: The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,


s: The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,


s: Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more


s: The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,


s: The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse


s: Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,


s: The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the


s: These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and


s: And I am seiz'd by them, and friendlily held by them,


s: For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,


s: I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,


s: I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,


s: I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it


s: I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,


s: I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those


s: My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,


s: My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,


s: Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races


s: Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.


s: As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her


s: The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,


s: The ring is circled, the journey is done,


s: The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd, nevertheless the perfume


s: Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,


s: Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.


s: Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,


s: Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child


s: leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,


s: Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,


s: From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,


s: From the word stronger and more delicious than any,


s: From such as now they start the scene revisiting,


s: As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,


s: Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,


s: A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,


s: Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,


s: I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,


s: Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,


s: Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together,


s: And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,


s: And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,


s: Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.


s: Home, or rivers and mountains from home,


s: One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest,


s: Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next,


s: And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,


s: And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,


s: I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,


s: Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok's shore;


s: I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.


s: All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake,


s: Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.


s: He pour'd forth the meanings which I of all men know.


s: The rest might not, but I have treasur'd every note,


s: For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,


s: Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,


s: The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,


s: I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,


s: Listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,


s: Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,


s: And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,


s: It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.


s: O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?


s: What is that little black thing I see there in the white?


s: High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,


s: Surely you must know who is here, is here,


s: What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?


s: O it is the shape, the shape of my mate.'


s: O moon do not keep her from me any longer.


s: For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.


s: Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.


s: Carols of lonesome love! death's carols!


s: Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!


s: O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!


s: And do you wait a moment you husky-nois'd sea,


s: For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,


s: So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,


s: With this just-sustain'd note I announce myself to you,


s: This gentle call is for you my love, for you.


s: That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,


s: That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,


s: O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!


s: And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.


s: The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,


s: With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,


s: On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray and rustling,


s: The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the


s: The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,


s: The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,


s: The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,


s: The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,


s: Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?


s: And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder


s: O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,


s: Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,


s: Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what


s: By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,


s: The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within,


s: O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)


s: O if I am to have so much, let me have more!


s: Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?


s: Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,


s: But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,


s: That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray beach,


s: With the thousand responsive songs at random,


s: And with them the key, the word up from the waves,


s: The word of the sweetest song and all songs,


s: That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,


s: (Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet


s: As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,


s: Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,


s: Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,


s: I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,


s: Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,


s: As I walk'd with that electric self seeking types.


s: As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd,


s: As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,


s: As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,


s: I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift,


s: Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.


s: O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,


s: Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,


s: But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet


s: untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,


s: I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single


s: Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.


s: You friable shore with trails of debris,


s: You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot,


s: I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been


s: I too am but a trail of drift and debris,


s: I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.


s: I throw myself upon your breast my father,


s: I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,


s: I hold you so firm till you answer me something.


s: Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,


s: Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)


s: Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,


s: Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me,


s: Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,


s: (See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,


s: See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)


s: Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another,


s: From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,


s: A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,


s: Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,


s: Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,


s: Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.


s: On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,


s: Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,


s: Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;


s: O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?


s: What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?


s: Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;


s: Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,


s: Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,


s: (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,


s: And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)


s: Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,


s: As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,


s: (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)


s: The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,


s: Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)


s: To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,


s: Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,


s: That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,


s: In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul,


s: Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,


s: An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.


s: O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,


s: For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,


s: But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!


s: Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.


s: Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,


s: Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,


s: And nigh at hand, only a very little above,


s: From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,


s: Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,


s: With these kisses let me remove your tears,


s: The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,


s: Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the


s: They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall


s: Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter?


s: Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?


s: (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,


s: I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)


s: Something there is more immortal even than the stars,


s: (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)


s: Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter


s: Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,


s: Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,


s: Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick


s: Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling


s: The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy


s: As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,


s: All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,


s: All distances of time, all inanimate forms,


s: This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,


s: And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.


s: Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing,


s: And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations,


s: Pick'd sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee,


s: (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,


s: Ever the stock preserv'd and never lost, though rare, enough for


s: Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!


s: Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!


s: And all that went down doing their duty,


s: Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,


s: Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,


s: Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,


s: Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,


s: Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,


s: On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,


s: Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,


s: Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,


s: Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,


s: Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,


s: A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,


s: After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,


s: After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,


s: Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,


s: Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,


s: Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,


s: Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,


s: Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,


s: Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,


s: A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,


s: To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early,


s: Here's a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.


s: Way for the President's marshal--way for the government cannon!


s: Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions


s: How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!


s: Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.


s: A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,


s: Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!


s: Cock'd hats of mothy mould--crutches made of mist!


s: Arms in slings--old men leaning on young men's shoulders.


s: What troubles you Yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of


s: For shame old maniacs--bring down those toss'd arms, and let your


s: Worse and worse--can't you stand it? are you retreating?


s: Is this hour with the living too dead for you?


s: To your graves--back--back to the hills old limpers!


s: Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the


s: graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey,


s: Look, all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women!


s: You are mighty cute--and here is one of your bargains.


s: Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,


s: Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,


s: O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!


s: Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.


s: And you, paid to defile the People--you liars, mark!


s: Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,


s: For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his


s: The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.


s: But the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the


s: Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape,


s: Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in


s: Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm,


s: One finger crook'd pointed high over the top, like the head of a


s: flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,


s: And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.


s: Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc'd by


s: They live in brothers again ready to defy you,


s: They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.


s: Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,


s: Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,


s: He will soon return, his messengers come anon.


s: No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,


s: Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,


s: Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,


s: Words babble, hearing and touch callous,


s: No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;


s: Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,


s: Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!


s: Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,


s: Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,


s: O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)


s: Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion,


s: Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,


s: (To break the stagnant tie--thee, thee to free, O soul,)


s: All great ideas, the races' aspirations,


s: All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,


s: Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,


s: Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,


s: The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars,


s: The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,


s: Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become


s: supplied--and of what will yet be supplied,


s: Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in


s: When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,


s: How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,


s: Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,


s: In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,


s: Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.


s: Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,


s: O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,


s: Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the


s: That you are here--that life exists and identity,


s: That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.


s: All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,


s: You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,


s: I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with


s: themselves, remorseful after deeds done,


s: I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,


s: I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who


s: A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I


s: Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)


s: In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,


s: Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,


s: Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]


s: Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,


s: A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,


s: And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.


s: Silent and amazed even when a little boy,


s: On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner,


s: He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,


s: He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,


s: With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.


s: Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,


s: I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother,


s: The sleeping mother and babe--hush'd, I study them long and long.


s: As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly


s: affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who


s: A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,


s: Concealing her face, concealing her form,


s: Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,


s: Of justice--as If could be any thing but the same ample law,


s: expounded by natural judges and saviors,


s: A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,


s: These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,


s: A thousand perfect men and women appear,


s: Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and


s: To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]


s: Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?


s: What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters,


s: Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?


s: What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,


s: Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that


s: How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,


s: (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!


s: Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,


s: Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,


s: With her million children around her, suddenly,


s: At dead of night, at news from the south,


s: Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement.


s: A shock electric, the night sustain'd it,


s: Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,


s: (How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with


s: How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and


s: The blood of the city up-arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere,


s: (Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,


s: Soon unlimber'd to begin the red business;)


s: All the mutter of preparation, all the determin'd arming,


s: The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,


s: Mannahatta a-march--and it's O to sing it well!


s: Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)


s: Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,


s: But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.


s: Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,


s: Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the


s: Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at


s: Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again,


s: Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon,


s: Through the windows--through doors--burst like a ruthless force,


s: Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,


s: Into the school where the scholar is studying;


s: No bargainers' bargains by day--no brokers or speculators--would


s: Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?


s: Make no parley--stop for no expostulation,


s: Mind not the timid--mind not the weeper or prayer,


s: Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,


s: Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties,


s: So strong you thump O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow.


s: From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird,


s: Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all,


s: To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,


s: To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,


s: The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,


s: And then the song of each member of these States.


s: On the ground where father and child stand,


s: In the upward air where their eyes turn,


s: Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.


s: My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,


s: Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)


s: Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?


s: And what does it say to me all the while?


s: And nothing at all to you it says--but look you my babe,


s: Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,


s: On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,


s: Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.


s: I am not the wind with girlish laughter,


s: Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,


s: Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,


s: O father it is alive--it is full of people--it has children,


s: O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,


s: I hear it--it talks to me--O it is wonderful!


s: O it stretches--it spreads and runs so fast--O my father,


s: What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much 't displeases me;


s: Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,


s: To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,


s: For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,


s: I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,


s: I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,


s: I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!


s: I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,


s: I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,


s: See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty


s: See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out;


s: Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance--and now the halyards


s: Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,


s: Discarding peace over all the sea and land.


s: Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!


s: No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,


s: We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,


s: Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor


s: Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,


s: The forty millions of people,--O bard! in life and death supreme,


s: They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money,


s: To be that pennant would be too fearful,


s: Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,


s: With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?


s: Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,


s: And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore,


s: No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,


s: My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,


s: Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their


s: prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those


s: You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast,


s: Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,


s: Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and


s: Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars,


s: Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun,


s: (Passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child,


s: While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching


s: I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves,


s: Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my


s: Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning,


s: Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and


s: fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;


s: All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,


s: Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.


s: 'Twas well, O soul--'twas a good preparation you gave me,


s: Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,


s: What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of


s: What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen?


s: Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?


s: What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here,


s: How it climbs with daring feet and hands--how it dashes!


s: How the true thunder bellows after the lightning--how bright the


s: How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown


s: through the dark by those flashes of lightning!


s: Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!


s: And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities!


s: Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,


s: Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature's


s: I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only,


s: But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,


s: I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,


s: (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)


s: Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.


s: Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,


s: When you yourself forever provide to defend me?


s: For you provided me Washington--and now these also.


s: O the beautiful sharp-bow'd steam-ships and sail-ships!)


s: City of the world! (for all races are here,


s: All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)


s: City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!


s: Behold me--incarnate me as I have incarnated you!


s: In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,


s: War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!


s: The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,)


s: Up the path you have follow'd me well, spite of your hundred and


s: You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done,


s: Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means,


s: On the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising,


s: There is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow,


s: Do you hear the officers giving their orders?


s: Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively?


s: The troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles,


s: While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down,


s: Green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze,


s: O'er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between.


s: But drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters,


s: Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!


s: As wending the crowds now part and disperse--but we old man,


s: Not for nothing have I brought you hither--we must remain,


s: You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell.


s: When I clutch'd your hand it was not with terror,


s: But suddenly pouring about me here on every side,


s: Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods,


s: And along the shores, in mire (now fill'd over) came again and


s: Walking then this hilltop, this same ground.


s: My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled from graves,


s: The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear,


s: Rude forts appear again, the old hoop'd guns are mounted,


s: I see the lines of rais'd earth stretching from river to bay,


s: I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes;


s: Here we lay encamp'd, it was this time in summer also.


s: As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration,


s: It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here,


s: It glitter'd in the sun in full sight of the army.


s: Twas a bold act then--the English war-ships had just arrived,


s: We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,


s: And the transports swarming with soldiers.


s: A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.


s: Twenty thousand were brought against us,


s: A veteran force furnish'd with good artillery.


s: Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march'd,


s: And how long and well it stood confronting death.


s: The General watch'd them from this hill,


s: They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment,


s: I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General.


s: I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish.


s: Till we turn'd menacing here, and then he left us.


s: Few return'd, nearly all remain in Brooklyn.


s: That and here my General's first battle,


s: No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude


s: But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain,


s: Wearied that night we lay foil'd and sullen,


s: But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing,


s: Silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my


s: Down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation;


s: Every one else seem'd fill'd with gloom,


s: As he stood in his boat and look'd toward the coming sun,


s: I saw something different from capitulation.


s: The two, the past and present, have interchanged,


s: I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward,


s: I must preserve that look as it beam'd on you rivers of Brooklyn.


s: See--as the annual round returns the phantoms return,


s: It is the 27th of August and the British have landed,


s: The battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke


s: Baptized that day in many a young man's bloody wounds.


s: In death, defeat, and sisters', mothers' tears.


s: In the midst of you stands an encampment very old,


s: Stands forever the camp of that dead brigade.


s: A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,


s: The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.


s: I see before me now a traveling army halting,


s: With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,


s: The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,


s: Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover'd men,


s: In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,


s: With artillery interspers'd--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,


s: A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow--but


s: Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,


s: A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,


s: Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,


s: Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,


s: Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the


s: Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)


s: But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call.


s: O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,


s: Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,


s: At present low, but will soon be better.


s: Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,


s: Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,


s: The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)


s: See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.


s: Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be


s: While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,


s: She with thin form presently drest in black,


s: Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;


s: When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,


s: One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I


s: responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)


s: Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the


s: Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest


s: Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and


s: And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his


s: grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited,


s: A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,


s: A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,


s: At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of


s: bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)


s: A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,


s: As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,


s: Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.


s: Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first


s: Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair,


s: Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling?


s: Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?


s: Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of


s: Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.


s: As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods,


s: Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could


s: Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.


s: Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,


s: Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,


s: Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port,


s: though beaten back and many times baffled;


s: Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,


s: By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he


s: More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose


s: Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me


s: Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!


s: Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,


s: Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?


s: An old man bending I come among new faces,


s: Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,


s: Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,


s: Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?


s: What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,


s: O maidens and young men I love and that love me,


s: While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,


s: Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,


s: Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,


s: To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,


s: With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,


s: I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,


s: One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you,


s: On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)


s: (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!


s: From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,


s: I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,


s: But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,


s: I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,


s: Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening,


s: The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,


s: Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,


s: The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,


s: I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,


s: Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,


s: Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and


s: But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,


s: grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,


s: And now to conceive and show to the world what your children


s: Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,


s: Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,


s: Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,


s: Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the


s: Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,


s: Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,


s: Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,


s: Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and


s: Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!


s: O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!


s: The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!


s: The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the


s: Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!


s: Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.


s: Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,


s: On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,


s: Up from the east the silvery round moon,


s: Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,


s: And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,


s: All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,


s: And every blow of the great convulsive drums,


s: (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,


s: Two veterans son and father dropt together,


s: And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,


s: The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,


s: ('Tis some mother's large transparent face,


s: O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!


s: O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!


s: And the bugles and the drums give you music,


s: And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,


s: Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,


s: They shall yet make Columbia victorious.


s: Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,


s: If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.


s: One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade,


s: From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall


s: More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.


s: To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come,


s: The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,


s: The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.


s: These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,


s: (Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?


s: Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?


s: Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)


s: I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.


s: The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the


s: I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the


s: The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,


s: All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,


s: The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,


s: And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in


s: dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the


s: And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,


s: (The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red


s: heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)


s: Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full run,


s: With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles,


s: And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color'd rockets.


s: Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,


s: With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet?


s: Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?


s: ('Tis while our army lines Carolina's sands and pines,


s: Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com'st to me,


s: As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)


s: Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder'd,


s: A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,


s: Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.


s: No further does she say, but lingering all the day,


s: What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?


s: Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?


s: Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?


s: Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,


s: Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,


s: I have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier,


s: And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,


s: Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,


s: World take good notice, silver stars fading,


s: Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,


s: Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,


s: Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.


s: Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,


s: Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among


s: Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,


s: Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.


s: Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be


s: That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly


s: wash again, and ever again, this solid world;


s: For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,


s: I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,


s: O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,


s: Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;


s: The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,


s: Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,


s: As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado


s: As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,


s: I know I am restless and make others so,


s: I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,


s: For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to


s: I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,


s: And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,


s: Covering all my lands--all my seashores lining!


s: Flag cerulean--sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!


s: Ah my silvery beauty--ah my woolly white and crimson!


s: Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!


s: Did you seek the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes?


s: Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?


s: (I have been born of the same as the war was born,


s: The drum-corps' rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the


s: Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,


s: (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)


s: Flauntest now unharm'd in immortal soundness and bloom--lo, in


s: Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!


s: Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;


s: As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,


s: As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the


s: Leave me your pulses of rage--bequeath them to me--fill me with


s: Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,


s: Let them identify you to the future in these songs.


s: You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)


s: The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,


s: Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike,


s: Myself and this contentious soul of mine,


s: Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,


s: Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,


s: Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,


s: To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.


s: From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute,


s: Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,


s: From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,


s: Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,


s: Then turn, and be not alarm'd O Libertad--turn your undying face,


s: To the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last,


s: To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,


s: But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.


s: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd


s: When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,


s: And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,


s: Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,


s: Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,


s: O shades of night--O moody, tearful night!


s: O great star disappear'd--O the black murk that hides the star!


s: O cruel hands that hold me powerless--O helpless soul of me!


s: O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.


s: A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.


s: The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,


s: Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,


s: If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.)


s: Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,


s: Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd


s: Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the


s: Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,


s: Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,


s: Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,


s: Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,


s: With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,


s: Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,


s: O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,


s: But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,


s: Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,


s: With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,


s: For you and the coffins all of you O death.)


s: Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,


s: As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,


s: O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,


s: But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,


s: The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.


s: O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?


s: Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till


s: These and with these and the breath of my chant,


s: O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?


s: And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,


s: To adorn the burial-house of him I love?


s: Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,


s: The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,


s: And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.


s: Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,


s: The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,


s: The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,


s: The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,


s: Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.


s: Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,


s: Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.


s: O wild and loose to my soul--O wondrous singer!


s: You only I hear--yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)


s: Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.


s: Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,


s: The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,


s: And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy


s: And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with


s: And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.


s: Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,


s: And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,


s: I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,


s: And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,


s: The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three,


s: And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.


s: From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,


s: As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,


s: And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.


s: Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,


s: In the day, in the night, to all, to each,


s: For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,


s: And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!


s: For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.


s: Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,


s: Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?


s: Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,


s: Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.


s: The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,


s: And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.


s: Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the


s: Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,


s: With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.


s: Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,


s: And I with my comrades there in the night.


s: While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,


s: I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,


s: And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,


s: I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,


s: They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,


s: The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,


s: And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,


s: Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,


s: Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again


s: Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,


s: As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,


s: Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,


s: Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,


s: The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,


s: And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,


s: Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,


s: There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.


s: O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,


s: The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,


s: The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,


s: While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;


s: O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;


s: Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,


s: My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,


s: My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,


s: The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,


s: From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;


s: And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,


s: And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,


s: No more for him life's stormy conflicts,


s: Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events,


s: Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.


s: Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,


s: Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,


s: Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,


s: As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the


s: A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,


s: Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,


s: And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,


s: I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,


s: I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.


s: A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,


s: What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,


s: We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,


s: We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,


s: We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,


s: Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,


s: Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or


s: If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us,


s: It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)


s: Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?


s: There can be any number of supremes--one does not countervail


s: another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or


s: No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.


s: Produce great Persons, the rest follows.


s: Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,


s: I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,


s: Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!


s: Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?


s: Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?


s: (With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,


s: These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)


s: O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?


s: Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,


s: Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey--juice,


s: Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,


s: The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and


s: A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.


s: Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under


s: Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne


s: Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was


s: And that he shall be fittest for his days.


s: One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.


s: Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,


s: Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,


s: Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,


s: Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,


s: Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with


s: Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,


s: Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia,


s: Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,


s: If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he


s: He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with


s: Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,


s: Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the


s: fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,


s: The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,


s: Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the


s: Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming


s: The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,


s: Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,


s: Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd,


s: I mark the new aureola around your head,


s: No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,


s: With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing,


s: And your port immovable where you stand,


s: The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his


s: senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,


s: An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)


s: O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision


s: Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.


s: (Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!


s: But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,


s: pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)


s: I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,


s: I heard the voice arising demanding bards,


s: By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be


s: fused into the compact organism of a Nation.


s: Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!


s: Of these States the poet is the equable man,


s: Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,


s: He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither


s: He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,


s: He is the equalizer of his age and land,


s: He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,


s: In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,


s: thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,


s: commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,


s: In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as


s: As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,


s: His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,


s: In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,


s: He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,


s: For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,


s: For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,


s: Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,


s: They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,


s: That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.


s: Songs of the rapid arming and the march,


s: The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,


s: I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,


s: I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight--O the


s: Hark, the ringing word Charge!--now the tussle and the furious


s: Now the corpses tumble curl'd upon the ground,


s: Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,


s: Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in


s: The place is august, the terms obdurate.


s: Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?


s: Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?


s: Have you learn'd the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,


s: first year of Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners, ratified


s: Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution?


s: Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?


s: Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,


s: fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the


s: Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?


s: Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?


s: Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?


s: Is it not something that has been better told or done before?


s: Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?


s: Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?


s: Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?


s: Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?