s: Yet how had it been, if some traveller this way,


s: Had, dreaming no mischief, but chanced to cry, Hey?'


s: He stood with his head in the mulberry-tree,


s: And he spoke out aloud in his fond reverie;


s: At the sound of the word the good mare made a push,


s: And down went the priest in the wild-briar bush.


s: He remember'd too late, on his thorny green bed,


s: Much that well may be thought cannot wisely be said.


s: 'Thou seem'st,' quoth she, 'a knight full good.


s: 'That's overmuch,' quoth Lancelot, 'tho,


s: They set their spears unto their steeds,


s: They couch'd their spears, (their horses ran


s: And struck them each immidst their shields,


s: They took them to their shields full fast,


s: 'Thou art,' quoth Tarquin, 'the best knight


s: And with their swords and shields they ran,


s: Three fishers went sailing away to the west,


s: Each thought on the woman who loved him best,


s: And the children stood watching them out of the town;


s: And there's little to earn, and many to keep,


s: Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,


s: And they trimm'd the lamps as the sun went down;


s: They look'd at the squall, and they look'd at the shower,


s: And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.


s: Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,


s: Three corpses lay out on the shining sands


s: In the morning gleam as the tide went down,


s: And the women are weeping and wringing their hands


s: For those who will never come home to the town;


s: And the sooner 'tis over, the sooner to sleep,


s: And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.


s: For threatening clouds the moon had drown'd;


s: 'Whence comes,' said I, 'that piteous moan?'


s: 'What ails you, child?'--she sobb'd, 'Look here!'


s: The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,


s: Their graves are sever'd far and wide,--


s: One sleeps where Southern vines are drest


s: Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,


s: That overhung a mole-hill large and round,


s: I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush


s: Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound


s: With joy; and oft, an unintruding guest,


s: I watch'd her secret toils from day to day,


s: How true she warp'd the moss to form her nest,


s: And modell'd it within with wool and clay.


s: And bye and bye, like heath-bells gilt with dew,


s: There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers,


s: Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue;


s: And there I witness'd, in the summer hours,


s: A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,


s: Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.


s: Though little given to care and thought,


s: Like blood-drops from my heart they dropp'd,


s: And hide my head where wild beasts roam.


s: Through the crowds that praise his deeds;


s: Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!


s: Not a soul in the village this morning will stay:


s: The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,


s: And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds.'


s: Of coats and of jackets, grey, scarlet, and green,


s: On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;


s: With their comely blue aprons and caps white as snow,


s: The girls on the hills make a holiday show.


s: Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,


s: Fill'd the funeral basin at Timothy's door;


s: A coffin through Timothy's threshold had past;


s: One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.


s: Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,


s: The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark! away!


s: Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut,


s: With a leisurely motion, the door of his hut.


s: Perhaps to himself at that moment he said;


s: 'The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead.'


s: But of this, in my ears, not a word did he speak;


s: And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.


s: Her full black ringlets downward roll'd,


s: Stillness with love, and day with light.


s: She sleeps: her breathings are not heard


s: The gold-fringed pillow lightly press'd:


s: The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd,


s: The palace bang'd and buzz'd and clackt,


s: And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and spoke,


s: And scare the small birds from the corn.


s: The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,


s: And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold,


s: And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,


s: When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.


s: Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,


s: That host with their banners at sunset were seen;


s: Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,


s: That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.


s: For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,


s: And breath'd in the face of the foe as he pass'd;


s: And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,


s: And their hearts but once heav'd, and for ever were still.


s: And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,


s: But through them there roll'd not the breath of his pride;


s: And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,


s: And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.


s: And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,


s: With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,


s: And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,


s: The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.


s: And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,


s: And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal,


s: And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,


s: Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!


s: And she his niece. He often look'd at them,


s: And often thought, 'I'll make them man and wife.'


s: And yearn'd towards William; but the youth, because


s: He had been always with her in the house,


s: When Allan call'd his son, and said: 'My son,


s: To look to; thrifty too, beyond her age.


s: Had once hard words, and parted, and he died


s: In foreign lands; but for his sake I bred


s: His daughter Dora: take her for your wife;


s: For I have wish'd this marriage, night and day,


s: For many years.' But William answer'd short:


s: I will not marry Dora.' Then the old man


s: Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said:


s: 'You will not, boy! you dare to answer thus!


s: And so it shall be now for me. Look to't;


s: Consider, William; take a month to think,


s: Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall pack


s: But William answer'd madly, bit his lips,


s: And broke away. The more he look'd at her


s: The less he liked her; and his ways were harsh;


s: The month was out he left his father's house,


s: And hired himself to work within the fields;


s: And half in love, half spite, he woo'd and wed


s: Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan call'd


s: His niece and said: 'My girl, I love you well;


s: But if you speak with him that was my son,


s: Or change a word with her he calls his wife,


s: My home is none of yours. My will is law.'


s: And Dora promised, being meek. She thought,


s: 'It cannot be: my uncle's mind will change.'


s: And days went on, and there was born a boy


s: To William; then distresses came on him;


s: And day by day he pass'd his father's gate,


s: Heart-broken, and his father help'd him not.


s: But Dora stored what little she could save,


s: And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know


s: Who sent it; till at last a fever seized


s: On William, and in harvest-time he died.


s: And look'd with tears upon her boy, and thought


s: Hard things of Dora. Dora came and said:


s: And I have sinn'd, for it was all through me


s: But, Mary, for the sake of him that's gone,


s: And for your sake, the woman that he chose,


s: You know there has not been for these five years


s: Among the wheat; that, when his heart is glad


s: Of the full harvest, he may see the boy,


s: And bless him for the sake of him that's gone.'


s: And Dora took the child, and went her way


s: That was unsown, where many poppies grew.


s: And spied her not; for none of all his men


s: Dare tell him Dora waited with the child;


s: And Dora would have risen and gone to him,


s: But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers reap'd,


s: And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.


s: But when the morrow came, she rose and took


s: The child once more, and sat upon the mound;


s: And made a little wreath of all the flowers


s: To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye.


s: Then when the farmer pass'd into the field


s: He spied her, and he left his men at work


s: And came and said, 'Where were you yesterday?


s: Whose child is that? what are you doing here?'


s: And answer'd softly, 'This is William's child.'


s: 'Do with me as you will, but take the child


s: And bless him for the sake of him that's gone.'


s: You knew my word was law, and yet you dared


s: To slight it. Well--for I will take the boy;


s: But go you hence, and never see me more.'


s: So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloud


s: And struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell


s: At Dora's feet. She bow'd upon her hands,


s: And the boy's cry came to her from the field.


s: More and more distant. She bow'd down her head,


s: Remembering the day when first she came,


s: And all the things that had been. She bow'd down


s: And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd,


s: And the sun fell and all the land was dark.


s: Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood


s: Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise


s: To God that help'd her in her widowhood.


s: But, Mary, let me live and work with you:


s: He says that he will never see me more.'


s: Then answer'd Mary, 'This shall never be,


s: That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself:


s: And, now I think, he shall not have the boy,


s: For he will teach him hardness, and to slight


s: His mother: therefore thou and I will go,


s: And I will have my boy, and bring him home;


s: And I will beg of him to take thee back;


s: And if he will not take thee back again,


s: Then thou and I will live within one house,


s: And work for William's child until he grows


s: Each other, and set out and reach'd the farm.


s: The door was off the latch; they peep'd and saw


s: The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees,


s: Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm,


s: And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks,


s: Like one that loved him: and the lad stretch'd out


s: And babbled for the golden seal that hung


s: From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire.


s: Then they came in; but when the boy beheld


s: His mother, he cried out to come to her:


s: Or William, or this child; but now I come


s: For Dora: take her back; she loves you well;


s: O Sir, when William died, he died at peace


s: With all men; for I ask'd him, and he said,


s: I had been a patient wife: but, Sir, he said


s: That he was wrong to cross his father thus:


s: "God bless him!" he said, "and may he never know


s: The troubles I have gone through!" then he turn'd


s: But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you


s: Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight


s: His father's memory; and take Dora back,


s: And all at once the old man burst in sobs:--


s: 'I have been to blame--to blame! I have kill'd my son!


s: I have kill'd him--but I loved him--my dear son!


s: May God forgive me!--I have been to blame.


s: The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times,


s: And all the man was broken with remorse;


s: And all his love came back a hundredfold;


s: And for three hours he sobb'd o'er William's child,


s: But Dora lived unmarried till her death.


s: There's that old hag Moll Brown, look, see, just past!


s: I don't think she's belied, 'tis clear's the sun


s: That she's a witch if ever there was one.


s: Or three folk that have learnt what Moll can do.


s: She did, one time, a pretty deal of harm


s: To Farmer Gruff's folks, down at Lower Farm.


s: One day, you know, they happen'd to offend her,


s: And so, you know, they soon began to find


s: She soon bewitch'd them; and she had such power,


s: That she did make their milk and ale turn sour,


s: And addle all the eggs their fowls did lay;


s: They couldn't fetch the butter in the churn,


s: And fall, and turn their snouts towards the sky,


s: Were death-struck while they were a-pickin'


s: And flapp'd their wings and dropp'd down dead.


s: They couldn't fat the calves; they wouldn't thrive;


s: Their sheep all took the rot and gave no wool;


s: Their horses fell away to skin and bones,


s: And if the wretched souls went up to bed


s: The hag did come and ride them all half dead.


s: They used to keep her out o' the house 'tis true,


s: And I've a-heard the farmer's wife did try


s: She bent the pin and broke the needle's top


s: Against her skin, you know, and that, in course,


s: Did only make the hag bewitch them worse.


s: There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,


s: She went to market her eggs for to sell;


s: And she fell asleep on the king's highway.


s: There came by a pedlar whose name was Stout,


s: Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.


s: She began to shiver and she began to shake.


s: She began to wonder and she began to cry,


s: I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;


s: And if it be not I, he'll loudly bark and wail!'


s: Home went the little woman all in the dark,


s: Up got the little dog, and he began to bark;


s: 'Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!'


s: And all the trees were bread and cheese,


s: There was a little boy and a little girl


s: _if they had still wit to understand it_


s: I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear,


s: And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,


s: Did wish of God, to 'scape the rod, a tall young man to be,


s: The young man eke that feels his bones with pain opprest,


s: How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest!


s: The rich old man that sees his end draw on so sore,


s: How would he be a boy again to live so much the more.


s: Whereat full oft I smiled, to see how all those three,


s: From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and change degree.


s: Or standing long an oak three hundred year,


s: To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;


s: In small proportions we just beauty see;


s: And in short measures life may perfect be.


s: Coleridge, S. T., IV, XXIX, XXXVIII, CLXV


s: =Tom Brown's School Days.= By Thomas Hughes. 2s. 6d., net.


s: =Lyric Love.= An Anthology. Edited by W. Watson. 2s. 6d., net.


s: =Selections from Cowper's Poems.= With an Introduction, by Mrs.


s: =Balthazar Gracian's Art of Worldly Wisdom.= Translated by JOSEPH


s: =Matthew Arnold's Selected Poems.= 2s. 6d., net.


s: =Golden Treasury Psalter.= Student's Edition. The Golden Treasury


s: Chronologically arranged. By FOUR FRIENDS. 2s. 6d., net.


s: =Selections from the Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough.= 2s. 6d., net.


s: ’Twas Signe proud that caused their feud,


s: And held to my breast my loved one prest,


s: When down we fell the cloudlets through.”


s: With his fingers white he thrice tapped light


s: The daughter of Elle lay awake, and well


s: When down I sank the cloudlets through.”


s: “Thy dreaming thou wast in heaven, doth mean


s: But that thou shalt die for her is shown


s: By thy falling through the little cloud.”


s: For himself he clothes has caused be made,


s: And hail the child that’s Signild styled,


s: And thou thy meat from my dish shalt eat,


s: They sewed the hart, and they sewed the hind,


s: And loud with her sharp voice she spake:


s: Proud Signild foremost went, and stepped


s: Did off, then bright his faulchion shone.


s: Your breasts like those of another maid?”


s: Save Hafbur young, whose deeds are sung,


s: Straight turn your face and on him gaze,


s: Why cam’st thou not with hawk and beagle?”


s: They thought that quite alone were they;


s: When she had removed the sword approved,


s: With shield and faulchion struck they hard:


s: “Come out, come out, young Bear,” they shout,


s: “Sirs, straightway bind ye Hafbur’s hands


s: And they placed Hafbur, son of the King,


s: “Hear, Signild, hear, do thou show clear


s: So hard and stern they thought his case.


s: And when they reached the verdant plain,


s: He begged he might have a short respite,


s: “He’s dead,” she thought, “it vails me nought


s: She called together her maids with speed,


s: O’er his shoulder blade he cast his sight;


s: “Now burns in bower the beauteous flower


s: When out of breath they reached the heath,


s: Printed for THOMAS J. WISE, Hampstead, N.W.


s: For her morning gift her Lord she prayed:


s: To ’scape from death could the like not pay.”


s: And, Sir, you must grant me this boon beside,


s: “What ladies can buy to wear they are free,


s: And hindrance none they shall meet from me;


s: If the son of a Boor can a horse support,


s: ‘Fore God, I’ll never destroy his sport!”


s: “My Lord, we’ll that matter let drop to the ground;


s: With chains of steel let the land be bound,


s: So that man or woman thereout or therein


s: “To Ribe, to winter there, we’ll depart,


s: There smiths we shall find well skilled in their art;


s: The smith shall work without thanks or fee.


s: Much benefit thence shall to thee accrue.”


s: “My father was King in the land before me,


s: Without Boor and Burger skinning alive.”


s: “Each peasant’s wife of a son made light


s: Shall give me an ounce of gold so bright;


s: He’d heard enough to suffice for that tide.


s: Dagmar he thought stood his face before.


s: You suffer not Berngerd at home to stay.


s: “If she with her flatteries blind your eyes,


s: The child will weep in the cradle that lies.


s: How that will boot you time will teach.”


s: The King has proclaimed through the whole country,


s: To the war with him each tenth man should hie.


s: Now lies Berngerd in the cold black ground,


s: Oxen are still in the Boor’s stall found.


s: Berngerd she lies ’neath the dingy sward,


s: The Danes their Monarch love and regard.


s: Than rich with a poor man’s curse and hate;


s: Than the wealth of the world with scorn obtain.


s: If the winter were sharp and the rich man hard,


s: With her hand the hungry she loved to feed,


s: The prisoner oft from his chains she freed,


s: The castle of Martha was wrapped in fire,


s: She dwelt in the tower both night and day,


s: ’Neath the church roof sat the dull owl gray,


s: In the house of the Lord she dwelt safe and content


s: ’Till the foes their departure had ta’en;


s: Then back to her ruined castle she went,


s: There found the houseless a cover once more,


s: And when the Dame lay in her coffin and smil’d,


s: The bell on the day of the burial toll’d,


s: When they the bier set down for a space,


s: A fountain sprang forth in that very place,


s: For oft have the sick become sound and whole,


s: O’er the sweet smelling meads with his lyre in his hand


s: In the twilight of evening, refreshing and bland,


s: He sang of the flowrets that slept in the tomb,


s: He sang of the flowrets that poured their perfume,


s: He sang of the flowrets that yet were to bloom.


s: And the rose yet living with blushes of red


s: And the rose which unborn concealed yet lies,


s: By a fountain’s side with verdure array’d


s: And the murmur and hum of the pure water fleeting,


s: And the strains, which the birds of the wood were repeating,


s: And the innocent heart, which so peaceful was beating,


s: In the visions of sleep there came to his side


s: And the songster sped with that sire for his guide


s: The mouldering bones of old heroes lay round;


s: Rose from their graves wild gestures making.


s: But the old man smiled as his mind he led


s: Then a lamp in the night’s deep silence shone


s: To the harp then pointing the sage disappears,


s: “Yes, yes, the young bard thy countenance knows,”


s: “Not in vain in my bosom a holy fire glows,


s: Not in vain thy bright lamp the grave’s mystery shews,


s: Again there appeared in the dreams of the stripling


s: It came as in flood come the high billows rippling,


s: Though the look of an aged and slow female wearing,


s: It ran like the breezes in spring time careering,


s: Full often it vanished with threatening bearing.


s: But suddenly caught he the fugitive wild,


s: “Thee often I’ve met on life’s journey,” he said,


s: “And when like a meteor thou past me hast sped,


s: I’ve seen thee look backward—and threaten.


s: “O! kiss me, sweet maiden, ere on thou dost stray,


s: I’ve seen thee with flowers strew the wanderer’s way.


s: Had’st fled farthest off; and sometimes they became


s: A Bauta-stone over the worm-wasted frame.


s: “Vouchsafe me a smile,” said the youth, “I entreat,


s: Of palms, verdant palms, to the stripling so clever,


s: Who caught thee, though lightning fleet.”


s: Again to his eye a fair vision was given,


s: So kindled his glance toward earth’s gentle child.


s: As the maid to her beckons the youth she loves dearly,


s: When vespers are chiming and Luna shines clearly,


s: So toward him beckoned the Angel, and smil’d.


s: With rapture the songster took thither his way,


s: Where the winged one of heaven stood beauteous and gay.


s: But, just as he hoped that the height was surmounted,


s: Far distant again they each other confronted.


s: “My seraph! wilt ever avoid my embrace?”


s: “But though I’m unable to climb to thy place,


s: My eye thou hast blest from the mansions of grace,


s: And thy heaven, thou distant, I’ve seen.”


s: His slumber departed, his visions they fled,


s: But oft when he harped they came into his head.


s: “Blest, trebly blest, may our life be regarded,


s: Far unto me hear threefold life is awarded.


s: And the rose, which yet lives in blushes and bloom,


s: Yes, from its concealment, the unborn rose


s: (_So sweet in Drontheim ’tis to dwell_!)


s: Shall rule o’er Norroway’s hill and dale.


s: “Who first of us reaches our native ground,


s: O’er all the region shall King be crown’d.”


s: Thou shalt change vessels, I swear, with me.


s: I shall make with the Ox a poor figure indeed.


s: “The dragon is swift as the clouds in chase,


s: “Hear, Harald, what I shall say to thee,


s: What thou hast proposed well pleaseth me.


s: “If my ship in aught be better than thine,


s: And I with the Ox will the journey make.


s: “But first to the Church we’ll bend our way,


s: His beautiful hair like the bright gold glow’d.


s: But soon out of breath there came a man:


s: “Thy brother is sailing off, fast as he can.”


s: “Let them sail, my friend, who to sail may choose,


s: “The Mass is the word of our blessed Lord.


s: Take water, ye swains, for our table board.


s: “We will sit at board, and the bread we will taste,


s: Now down they all sped to the ocean strand,


s: Where the Ox lay rocking before the land.


s: The anchor, and cable, the sail and oar.


s: Saint Oluf he stood on the prow when on board:


s: “Now forward, thou Ox, in the name of the Lord!”


s: He grappled the Ox by the horn so white:


s: “Hie now as if thou went clover to bite!”


s: In his wake roll’d the billows boisterously.


s: He hallooed to the lad on the yard so high:


s: “No more of the pomps of the world I see,


s: Than the uppermost top of the good oak tree.


s: “I see, ’neath the land of Norroway, skim


s: “I see, ’neath Norroway’s mountains proud,


s: “To the haven much speedier thou must course!”


s: Then cords he took, and his mariners fast


s: He tied to the vessel’s sheets and mast.


s: ’Twas then, ’twas then, the steersman cried:


s: So o’er the hills and dales they career,


s: They sailed along o’er the mountains blue,


s: “Who sails o’er the gold in which we joy?


s: So they sailed o’er Skaaney’s mountains tall,


s: Out came a Carline, with spindle and rok:


s: “Saint Oluf! why sailest thou us to mock?


s: “Saint Oluf, thou who the red beard hast,


s: Through my chamber wall thy ship hath passed.”


s: With a glance of scorn did Saint Oluf say:


s: “Stand there a flint rock for ever and aye!”


s: Unchided, unhindered, they bravely sailed on,


s: Before them yielded both stock and stone.


s: Still onward they sailed in such gallant guise,


s: That no man upon them could fix his eyes.


s: Behind the sail dropped the shaft he sent.


s: From the prow Saint Oluf a barb shot free,


s: Behind the Ox fell the shaft in the sea.


s: And therefore home by three days he won.


s: But the Saint was a man of devotion full,


s: And the Saint gat Norroway’s land to rule.


s: Whom God doth help makes bravely his way,


s: Be still, be still, and speak not back again.


s: What right have you to answer in this strain?


s: Whilst I’m a man, a prince of the creation,


s: You’re but a female woman by your station;


s: A creature for man’s sovereign service born,


s: Whose fitting wages are contempt and scorn.


s: A creature formed to dive down in the sea


s: To fetch up sea-eggs for the likes of me;


s: Only too grateful, when we’ve stilled our greed,


s: If on our leavings you’re allowed to feed.


s: If thus I speak, I speak on public grounds,


s: Printed for THOMAS J. WISE, Hampstead, N.W.


s: All, all alike, endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,


s: Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,


s: Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,


s: This little volume of poems, selected from the complete edition


s: Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me


s: _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd_


s: EPILOGUE: Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps


s: For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,


s: Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol--run up above them all,


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: 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: 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: I have rejected nothing you offer'd me--whom you adopted I have


s: Good or bad I never question you--I love all--I do not condemn


s: I chant and celebrate all that is yours--yet peace no more,


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: 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: 'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu


s: Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and


s: And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and


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: Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity,


s: The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also


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: (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?


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: 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: In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,


s: O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and


s: To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.


s: As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,


s: Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes--of the countless buried unknown


s: Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes,


s: Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,


s: Embalm'd with love in this twilight song.


s: A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,


s: As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,


s: Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended


s: Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,


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: Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.


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: 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: Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,


s: Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,


s: The blood of the city up--arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere,


s: The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing


s: The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their


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: War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing to


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: By the banner's voice and the child's voice and sea's voice and


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: Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,


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: Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the


s: These, ah these, how valued and toil'd for these!


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 it displeases me;


s: Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants


s: But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall'd


s: Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,


s: To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,


s: Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all--and yet we


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: I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New


s: I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile


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: Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,


s: Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square


s: The forty millions of people--O bard! in life and death supreme,


s: We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,


s: They will never to me be anything, 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 black ships fighting on the sea envelop'd in smoke,


s: And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of


s: Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,


s: No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,


s: My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,


s: I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,


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: Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all--(absolute


s: I too leave the rest!--great as it is, it is nothing--houses,


s: (_A Long Island incident--early part of the nineteenth century._)


s: Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,


s: Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,


s: I cast a reminiscence--(likely 't will offend you,


s: I heard it in my boyhood)--More than a generation since,


s: A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself


s: Lay dying--sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,


s: To the sights and scenes--to forming the line of battle,


s: To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,


s: The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;


s: Away with your life of peace!--your joys of peace!


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: Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,


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: 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: 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 over 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: Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.


s: The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,


s: The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,


s: The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.


s: Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,


s: The ancient banner perfectly maintain'd,


s: O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!


s: Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for


s: From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof


s: (The sun there at the centre though conceal'd,


s: Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,


s: Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds


s: In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,


s: Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,


s: Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,


s: Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields,


s: Onward I sped at the time--but now of their forms at night,


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: For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.


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: Travelling 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: Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come,


s: Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight


s: But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the


s: death-envelop'd march of peace as well as war goes on),


s: For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave,


s: We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.


s: (As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,


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: Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!


s: Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;


s: Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts (yet onward ever unfaltering


s: Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,


s: As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,


s: As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the


s: Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death


s: Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,


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: For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself,


s: Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,


s: Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,


s: Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,


s: O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,


s: O harvest of my lands--O boundless summer growths,


s: O lavish brown parturient earth--O infinite teeming womb,


s: Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,


s: The liliput countless armies of the grass,


s: The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,


s: The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,


s: The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,


s: The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,


s: Thou art all over set in births and joys!


s: Thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing


s: Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,


s: A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast


s: Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,


s: Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,


s: Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million


s: Thou all-acceptress--thou hospitable (thou only art hospitable as


s: Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and


s: In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,


s: Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying.


s: Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,


s: Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle;


s: No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.


s: Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping


s: Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow'd.


s: (Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs,


s: For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,


s: Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,


s: O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your


s: Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,


s: They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,


s: And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.


s: Your memories rising glide silently by me.


s: (Yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return,


s: I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,


s: I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,


s: No holiday soldiers--youthful, yet veterans,


s: Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field.


s: A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait,


s: Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields,


s: Melt, melt away ye armies--disperse ye blue-clad soldiers,


s: Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,


s: Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North,


s: With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.


s: The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding,


s: The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.


s: All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me,


s: I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last,


s: I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.


s: With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long,


s: And counts the varied gathering of the products.


s: Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,


s: Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane,


s: Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,


s: Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,


s: And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,


s: And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,


s: Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All,


s: With dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you.


s: Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well!


s: The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.


s: Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters,


s: The human-divine inventions, the labour-saving implements;


s: The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines,


s: The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well


s: separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,


s: Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the


s: Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in


s: Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.


s: Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,


s: Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the


s: golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,


s: Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,


s: Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,


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: In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd


s: With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the door-yard,


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 would'st 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 processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,


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: 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 odour holds me.


s: Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,


s: Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the


s: The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,


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: I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come


s: Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death._


s: Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings


s: And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are


s: And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night._


s: _The night in silence under many a star,


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 tree-tops I float thee a song,


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 débris and débris 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: O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.


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: As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,


s: The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,


s: From their graves in the trenches ascending,


s: From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,


s: From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,


s: Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,


s: My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,


s: Nor you drummers, neither at reveillé at dawn,


s: Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.


s: Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,


s: Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,


s: Follow me ever--desert me not while I live.


s: But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.


s: Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,


s: But love is not over--and what love, O comrades!


s: Perfume from battlefields rising, up from the foetor arising.


s: Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,


s: Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,


s: Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.


s: Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,


s: O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.


s: Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,


s: Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,


s: And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,


s: And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,


s: O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!


s: Exhale them perennial sweet death, years centuries hence.


s: I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,


s: The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,


s: Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,


s: Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.


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


s: Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd


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: With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly


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 sun and planets,


s: All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,


s: We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,


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


s: Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places,


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


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 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 wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,


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 wieldingthe 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: Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown


s: The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward


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


s: The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and


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: Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons


s: The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,


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: 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 equanimity is illustrated in affairs,


s: Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,


s: Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as


s: Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,


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: A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the


s: When he or she appears materials are overaw'd,


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: The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd, the


s: hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers,


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


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


s: Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,


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


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 mediæval ages and before the mediæval 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: Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.


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 scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe


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


s: The solid forest gives fluid utterances,


s: Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, 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: Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.


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 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 roof over the supper joyously cook'd by the chaste wife, and


s: joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's


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: 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: 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 arbour, 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: Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the


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: Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and


s: Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and


s: Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand


s: Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!


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: Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!


s: Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.


s: The old face of the mother of many children,


s: Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,


s: It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,


s: I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,


s: I heard what the singers were singing so long,


s: Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the


s: She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more


s: She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,


s: The sun just shines on her old white head.


s: O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! my South!


s: Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,


s: over flats of silvery sands or through swamps,


s: Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the


s: Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant


s: O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!


s: The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white


s: alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat,


s: The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;


s: O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!


s: By broad Potomac's shore, again old tongue


s: Again the freshness and the odours, again Virginia's summer sky,


s: Again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green,


s: Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses!


s: Lave subtly with your waters every line Potomac!


s: Always Florida's green peninsula--always the priceless delta of


s: Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,


s: Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver


s: mountains of New Mexico--always soft-breath'd Cuba,


s: The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of


s: dwellings--always these, and more, branching forth into


s: In farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done,


s: White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,


s: On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight


s: In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer


s: visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming,


s: In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black


s: The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,


s: sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work'd by horses, the


s: Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the


s: incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,


s: On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under


s: There are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous


s: moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;


s: Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an


s: excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all


s: bear bunches of flowers presented by women;


s: The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the


s: Mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;


s: passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;


s: In arrière the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines, the


s: calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,


s: The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,


s: All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,


s: The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveller


s: The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New


s: The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;


s: Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,


s: on the opposite wall where the shine is;


s: individuality of the States, each for itself--the money-makers,


s: Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,


s: The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,


s: Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the


s: myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,


s: Saskatchewan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing


s: Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with


s: parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and


s: Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing


s: The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh


s: themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside


s: move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to


s: time reliev'd by other sentinels--and I feeding and taking


s: fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives--and I, plunging at


s: Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more


s: inevitable united, part to part, and made out of a thousand


s: diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands are


s: inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY;


s: Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,


s: union of them, to afford the like to you?


s: Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you


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 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 guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves


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: See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the


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


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


s: Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the


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: Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.


s: As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,


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


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


s: A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,


s: Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,


s: With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,


s: I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New


s: And to define America, her athletic Democracy,


s: Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,


s: After a strange sad war, great war for thee


s: (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be


s: These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.


s: With all its angry and vehement play of causes


s: (With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years),


s: These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one,


s: Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,


s: As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,


s: Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,


s: I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,


s: I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of


s: I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's


s: For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!


s: For you, for you I am trilling these songs.


s: Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,


s: A special song before I go I'd sing o'er all the rest,


s: I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,


s: I'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,


s: But leave to those to come the house itself.


s: Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,


s: Such be the thought I'd think of thee America,


s: Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee.


s: The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee not,


s: Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,


s: With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas


s: Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,


s: And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,


s: By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,


s: Thought of man justified, blended with God,


s: Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!


s: Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!


s: Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,


s: To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.


s: Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with


s: Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,


s: The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.


s: Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only,


s: Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western


s: Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;


s: Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,


s: And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.


s: Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,


s: Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,


s: Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,


s: Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,


s: Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession


s: World of the real--world of the twain in one,


s: World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to


s: Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious


s: I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,


s: But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee,


s: (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,


s: (Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars,


s: Thee in thy ultimata (the preparations only now completed, the


s: Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational


s: In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy


s: These! these in thee (certain to come), to-day I prophesy.


s: Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,


s: Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.


s: To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,


s: Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith,


s: Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd,


s: Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale.


s: They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,


s: (Purport of all these apparitions of the real);


s: In thee America, the soul, its destinies,


s: Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!


s: By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd (by these thyself


s: Thou mental, moral orb--thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!


s: The Present holds thee not--for such vast growth as thine,


s: For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine,


s: The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.


s: _To U. S. G. return'd from his World's Tour._


s: Is not that where thou mov'st down history's great highways,


s: Ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike victory's dazzle,


s: Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,


s: As I walk these broad majestic days of peace


s: (For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific


s: Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,


s: Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,


s: Around me I hear that éclat of the world, politics, produce,


s: The announcements of recognized things, science,


s: The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.


s: I see the ships (they will last a few years),


s: The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,


s: And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.


s: Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,


s: Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,


s: triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,


s: They stand for realities--all is as it should be.


s: The rapt promises and luminè of seers, the spiritual world, these


s: Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,


s: Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;


s: As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,


s: Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!


s: Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,


s: I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the


s: Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to


s: Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me,


s: Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not


s: The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow


s: The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,


s: Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,


s: Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk,


s: And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds,


s: Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of


s: Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land,


s: Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.


s: Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all,


s: In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly,


s: In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains,


s: This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,


s: O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!


s: Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on!


s: Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,


s: Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,


s: Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,


s: Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,


s: Onward beneath the sun following its course,


s: The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication,


s: When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world,


s: Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star,


s: In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,


s: How they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through


s: The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self;


s: How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of


s: freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society,


s: Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,


s: Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,


s: (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska),


s: Of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake,


s: Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected,


s: Of these songs, well understood there (being made for that area),


s: A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,


s: And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,


s: (Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles


s: And death and infidelity at every step.)


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: 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 clamours 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: 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: His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,


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: If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he


s: Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is


s: Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp,


s: Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,


s: The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,


s: The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and


s: Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the


s: The prevailing ardour 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: An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)


s: Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.


s: (Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!


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: principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres


s: Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!


s: Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren,


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 war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as


s: good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw


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 dénouement,


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: 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: Have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the


s: first year of Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners,


s: ratified by the States, and read by Washington at the head of


s: Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution?


s: Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?


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: Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,


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?


s: Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?


s: What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities?


s: Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians


s: standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese,


s: Western men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy,


s: who has ever ask'd any thing of America?


s: The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons,


s: By the roadside others disdainfully toss'd.


s: Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,


s: (The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country


s: absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it).


s: He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results


s: The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;


s: A man before all--myself, typical, before all.


s: Give to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,


s: I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,


s: Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,


s: Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,


s: Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for


s: (Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?


s: Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)


s: I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,


s: It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,


s: I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,


s: The American compact is altogether with individuals,


s: The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,


s: Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.


s: Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women


s: After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men and


s: I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself


s: Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments,


s: ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,


s: O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,


s: Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,


s: Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,


s: Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,


s: The war (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth


s: Freedom, language, forms, employments, are you and me,


s: Not to build for that which builds for mankind,


s: Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,


s: Not to justify science nor the march of equality,


s: Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time.


s: I am for those that have never been master'd,


s: For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,


s: For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.


s: I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,


s: I will not be outfaced by irrational things,


s: I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,


s: I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,


s: (Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim'd at your breast,


s: Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)


s: I will confront these shows of the day and night,


s: I will know if I am to be less than they,


s: I will see if I am not as majestic as they,


s: I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,


s: I will see if I am to be less generous than they,


s: I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have


s: I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.


s: (Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,


s: I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,


s: While the winds fann'd me and the waves came trooping toward me,


s: I thrill'd with the power's pulsations, and the charm of my theme


s: Till the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me.


s: The loftiest bards of past ages strode before me,


s: Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario's shores,


s: Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage song.


s: (For the war, the war is over, the field is clear'd),


s: Till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward,


s: To cheer O Mother your boundless expectant soul.


s: Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer


s: I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves,


s: Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning,


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 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: 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: My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong


s: One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground


s: The cities I loved so well I abandon'd and left, I sped to the


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 have witness'd the true lightning, I have witness'd my cities


s: I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,


s: Fol de riddle, lol de riddle, hi ding do,


s: Fol de riddle, lol de riddle, hi ding do.


s: And shot his own sow quite through the heart;


s: There shall be books and books and books


s: And do you know, that pen went fairly mad;


s: It spluttered, spattered, scratched, and blotted so,


s: And so I put it down; but last night, after tea,


s: And in my dreams the pen came up to me and said:


s: “Here is the list of Asses who have tried


s: Look thou!” I looked, and lo!—perhaps you’ve guessed—


s: My name, like Abou Ben’s, led all the rest!


s: MY Bookworm gave a dinner to a number of his set.


s: I was not there—I say it to my very great regret.


s: For they dined well, I fancy, if the menu that I saw


s: Was followed as implicitly as one obeys the law.


s: “’Twill open,” he observed to me, “with quatrains on the half.


s: They go down easy; then for soup”—it really made me laugh—


s: “The poems of old Johnny Gay”—his words were rather rough—


s: “For fish, old Izaak Walton; and to serve as an _entrée_,


s: I think some fixed-up morsel, say from James, or from Daudet;


s: The roast will be Charles Kingsley—there’s a deal of beef in him.


s: “For game I’ll have Boccaccio—he’s quite the proper one;


s: He certainly is gamey, and a trifle underdone;


s: And for the salad, Addison, so fresh and crisp is he,


s: With just a touch of Pope to give a tang to him, you see.


s: And for dessert let Thackeray and O. Khayyám be brought,


s: The which completes a dinner of most wondrous richness fraught.


s: “For olives and for almonds we can take the jokes of _Punch_—


s: They’re good enough for us, I think, to casually munch;


s: And through it all we’ll quaff the wines that flow forever clear


s: From Avon’s vineyards in the heart of Will of Warwickshire.”


s: I’M in literary culture, and I’ve opened up a shop,


s: That I’m selling to the writers of full many a modern screed.


s: I’ve bacilli for ten volumes for a dollar, in a bag—


s: Not a single germ among ’em that’s been ever known to drag.


s: Not a single germ among ’em, if you see they’re planted right,


s: But will grow into a novel that they’ll say is out of sight.


s: I have motifs by the thousand, motifs sad and motifs gay.


s: You can buy ’em by the dozen, or I’ll serve ’em every day:


s: I will serve ’em in the morning, as the milkman serves his wares;


s: When you get down to your table with your head a vacuum,


s: You can say unto your helpmeet, “Has that quart of ideas come


s: Should you want a book of poems that will bring you into fame,


s: Let me send a sample packet that will guarantee the same,


s: I’ve a hundred comic packets that would make a Twain of Job;


s: Done up carefully in tin-foil, of my A 1 “Trilby Germs.”


s: So perchance if you’re ambitious in a literary line,


s: Be as dull as e’er you can be, you will surely cut a shine,


s: If you’ll only take advantage of this opportunity,


s: When you’re passing by to stop in for a little chat with me.


s: You may ask me, in conclusion, why I do not seek myself


s: All the laurel and the glory of these seeds I sell for pelf.


s: I will tell you, though the confidence I can’t deny is rash,


s: I’m a trifle long on laurels, and a little short of cash.


s: HE frowns with reason; he has always said,


s: “The public has no knowledge of true art;


s: The book of worth these days would not be read;


s: ’Tis trash not truth that goes upon the mart.”


s: And then was published his belovéd work—


s: With such success as this it must be bad!


s: I’VE read your story of your friend’s fine life,


s: Why you have named it “Blank, and Jane his wife,”


s: When you had better called it simply “Me.”


s: CHARLES LAMB is good, and so is Thackeray,


s: Lord Byron quite a dab at spreading ink;


s: But on the whole, at home, across the sea,


s: A “first” of Elia filled my soul with joy.


s: And when I found _Pendennis_ in the parts


s: A throb of gladness stirred my heart of hearts.


s: But none brought out that cloying sense of glee


s: That came from that first book by Mr. Me.


s: But no one lives who can survive that test.


s: His work is queer, and some folks call it bad,


s: But I don’t care, the fact remains that he


s: THE poet pens his odes and sonnets spruce


s: With quills plucked from the ordinary goose,


s: While critics write their sharp incisive lines


s: With quills snatched from the fretful porcupines.


s: IF Bacon wrote those grand inspiring lines


s: At which alternately man weeps and laughs,


s: Who was it penned those chirographic vines


s: We know these times as Shakespeare’s autographs?


s: MY library o’erflows with treasures rare:


s: Once doomed him for his verses to be paid,


s: And wrote like one who’d happened to be made.


s: So blue was he I feared he would not speak.


s: “Alas! I’ve lost my grip,” was his reply—


s: “I’ve writ but forty poems, sir, this week.”


s: “WHAT hundred books are best, think you?” I said,


s: He thought a moment, then he raised his head:


s: HE does not read at all, yet he doth hoard


s: Rich books. In exile on his shelves they’re stored;


s: And many a volume, sweet and good and true,


s: Fails in the work that it was made to do.


s: Why, e’en the dust they’ve caught since he began


s: Would quite suffice to make a decent man!


s: I GOT a tome to-day, and I was glad to strike it,


s: Because no other man can ever get one like it.


s: ’Tis poor, and badly print; its meaning’s Greek;


s: But what of that? ’Tis mine, and it’s unique.


s: Like those whose names, in days gone by,


s: A VOLUME’S just received on vellum print.


s: The book is worth the vellum—no more in’t.


s: But, as I search my head for thoughts, I find


s: That’s this, in short: while it no doubt may be


s: Most pleasant for an author small to see


s: That products of his brain and pen can live


s: Alone for that which they may haply give!


s: And though on vellum stiff the work appears,


s: It cannot live throughout the after-years,


s: Unless it has within its leaves some hint


s: Of something further than the style of print


s: I’ll choose it rather than some “bookish taste,”


s: Put out to catch a whimsey, flimsy sale.


s: I’d choose my Omar print on grocer’s wraps


s: Before the vellum books of “bookish” chaps.


s: MY epic verse, my pet production, which I deemed


s: Sufficient to advance me to the highest peak


s: Of difficult Parnassus, goal of which I’ve dreamed


s: For many a weary year, came back to me last week.


s: The Editor I cursed, that he should stand between


s: My dear ambition and my scarcely dearer self;


s: Whose unappreciation forced to blush unseen