s: Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?


s: Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians


s: standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, Western


s: men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the


s: infidel, 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: He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original


s: A man before all--myself, typical, before all.


s: Give me 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: Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,


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: The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one


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: (Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor


s: Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments,


s: ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,


s: Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (the same


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, poems, 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: I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams


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: (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 for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch'd


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: Let that which stood in front go behind,


s: Let that which was behind advance to the front,


s: Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions,


s: Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself,


s: Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself


s: As consequent from store of summer rains,


s: Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations,


s: Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,


s: Life's ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend,


s: Some threading Ohio's farm-fields or the woods,


s: Some down Colorado's canons from sources of perpetual snow,


s: Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,


s: Some in the north finding their way to Erie, Niagara, Ottawa,


s: Some to Atlantica's bays, and so to the great salt brine.


s: In you whoe'er you are my book perusing,


s: In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing,


s: All, all toward the mystic ocean tending.


s: Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,


s: Fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves,


s: (Not safe and peaceful only, waves rous'd and ominous too,


s: Out of the depths the storm's abysmic waves, who knows whence?


s: Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter'd sail.)


s: Or from the sea of Time, collecting vasting all, I bring,


s: Murmurs and echoes still call up, eternity's music faint and far,


s: Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life,


s: (For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give,)


s: These waifs from the deep, cast high and dry,


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, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,


s: Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,


s: Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon


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


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: (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: 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 labor-saving implements;


s: Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the


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


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: And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,


s: The early lilacs became part of this child,


s: And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red


s: clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,


s: And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the


s: And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,


s: And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys,


s: They gave this child more of themselves than that,


s: They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.


s: odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,


s: The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious


s: The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little


s: The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,


s: The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away


s: solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,


s: These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who


s: Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,


s: Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,


s: Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd seated on the ground,


s: Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders,


s: At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,


s: You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead


s: It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,


s: What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,


s: The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,


s: As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,


s: Unclaim'd, avoided house--take one breath from my tremulous lips,


s: Dead house of love--house of madness and sin, crumbled, crush'd,


s: House of life, erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house,


s: Months, years, an echoing, garnish'd house--but dead, dead, dead.


s: Something startles me where I thought I was safest,


s: I withdraw from the still woods I loved,


s: I will not go now on the pastures to walk,


s: O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?


s: How can you be alive you growths of spring?


s: Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?


s: Where have you disposed of their carcasses?


s: Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?


s: Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?


s: I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,


s: I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.


s: The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,


s: The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,


s: The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,


s: The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,


s: That the winds are really not infectious,


s: That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,


s: That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,


s: That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that


s: That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,


s: Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once


s: Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,


s: It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,


s: It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless


s: It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,


s: Keep on--Liberty is to be subserv'd whatever occurs;


s: That is nothing that is quell'd by one or two failures, or any


s: Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any


s: positive and composed, knows no discouragement,


s: For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,


s: And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,


s: And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)


s: The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and


s: The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,


s: It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.


s: When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,


s: Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from


s: And the infidel come into full possession.


s: Then courage European revolter, revoltress!


s: For till all ceases neither must you cease.


s: But I will search carefully for it even in being foil'd,


s: So it is--but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help'd, that


s: Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and


s: What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,


s: What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,


s: Not a mark, not a record remains--and yet all remains.


s: O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more


s: Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,


s: Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,


s: Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,


s: Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,


s: Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,


s: Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,


s: libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.


s: Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?


s: Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?


s: Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?


s: I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of


s: them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;


s: games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,


s: I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,


s: counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,


s: Manhattan's streets I saunter'd pondering,


s: The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence,


s: Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that


s: All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,


s: All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,


s: But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the


s: The indirect is just as much as the direct,


s: The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the


s: Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning,


s: betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,


s: But has results beyond death as really as before death.


s: The interest will come round--all will come round.


s: All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful,


s: All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw


s: All pains of enthusiasts scoff'd at by their neighbors,


s: All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,


s: All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded,


s: All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,


s: All suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of his


s: mouth, or the shaping of his great hands,


s: Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?


s: Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the


s: Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,


s: That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.


s: Declines to separate one part of life from every part,


s: Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,


s: That he who never peril'd his life, but retains it to old age in


s: riches and ease, has probably achiev'd nothing for himself worth


s: Knows that only that person has really learn'd who has learn'd to


s: Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,


s: Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor


s: Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,


s: Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,


s: The sun was low in the west one winter day,


s: Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)


s: Cries, help! O help! and wrings her hands,


s: Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,


s: While her gown touch'd them rustling in the silence,


s: She vanish'd with her children in the dusk.


s: While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr'd,


s: (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)


s: A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute,


s: A wondrous minute then--but after in the solitary night, to many,


s: Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle,


s: The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings,


s: Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)


s: The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,


s: Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,


s: All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,


s: The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,


s: The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,


s: With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,


s: Thou, soul, unloosen'd--the restlessness after I know not what;


s: Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!


s: O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!


s: The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,


s: Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,


s: A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.


s: What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?


s: What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?


s: But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of


s: With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd,


s: Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.


s: Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)


s: In one, among the city streets a laborer's home appear'd,


s: A happy painless mother birth'd a perfect child.


s: Sat peaceful parents with contented sons.


s: In one, by twos and threes, young people,


s: Hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets and roads,


s: Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat,


s: City and country, women's, men's and children's,


s: From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,


s: Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,


s: Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.


s: By you and all your teeming life old Thames,


s: But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.


s: Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]


s: Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,


s: These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,


s: (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears--0 heaven!


s: The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)


s: This glaze of God's serenest purest sky,


s: Out from the convolutions of this globe,


s: Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)


s: These burin'd eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,


s: A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,


s: Of youth long sped and middle age declining,


s: Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,


s: To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,


s: Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine


s: Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?


s: Come duly to the divine power to speak words?


s: For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,


s: After treading ground and breasting river and lake,


s: After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing


s: After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,


s: Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all--none


s: They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the


s: O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?


s: I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,


s: Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,


s: Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies


s: I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute


s: those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,


s: We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the


s: disputers nor any thing that is asserted,


s: We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions,


s: jealousies, recriminations on every side,


s: They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,


s: Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and


s: ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.


s: You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and


s: Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?


s: (O admirers, praise not me--compliment not me--you make me wince,


s: Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked,


s: I walk with delinquents with passionate love,


s: For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and


s: All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the


s: And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?


s: And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?


s: Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and


s: Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,


s: Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to


s: rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.


s: And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.


s: I was looking a long while for Intentions,


s: For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these


s: It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither


s: It is no more in the legends than in all else,


s: It is in the present--it is this earth to-day,


s: It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,)


s: It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,


s: Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,


s: So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,


s: And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true


s: realities of life, and go toward false realities,


s: And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them,


s: As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,


s: Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,


s: Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,


s: Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night


s: Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,


s: Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,


s: Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,


s: Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,


s: Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet


s: Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;


s: These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,


s: The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.


s: To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,


s: The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the


s: Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,


s: By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,


s: A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,


s: Forth issue then in copious golden jets,


s: The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,


s: The sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broad


s: Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here


s: The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)


s: You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,


s: Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is


s: Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the


s: poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)


s: Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence


s: Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman


s: love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,


s: Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the folds


s: Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,


s: A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but


s: every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;


s: What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own


s: I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.


s: or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,


s: spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual,


s: understands by subtle analogies all other theories,


s: Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day


s: but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,


s: Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the


s: Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,


s: The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,


s: Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy--draw nigh and commence;


s: It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,


s: And that to another, and every one to another still.


s: The great laws take and effuse without argument,


s: I am of the same style, for I am their friend,


s: I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.


s: They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.


s: It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so


s: exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or


s: I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,


s: Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,


s: And pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of


s: summers and winters to articulate and walk--all this is


s: And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other


s: And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,


s: And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is


s: Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,


s: They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,


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: Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land,


s: Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.


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: In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region,


s: They all know him, all are affectionate to him;


s: See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking;


s: Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running


s: In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.


s: O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass!


s: These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,


s: Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,


s: Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,


s: Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?


s: Cast you the real reckoning for your present?


s: The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?


s: To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.


s: Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;


s: Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?


s: From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,


s: Through the soft evening air enwinding all,


s: Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,


s: In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,


s: Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,


s: (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,


s: Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,


s: Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,


s: Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,


s: While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,


s: Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,


s: Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,


s: Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,


s: Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--with these and like of


s: Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,


s: With finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures.


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: Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies,


s: Strong hum of forest tree-tops--wind of the mountains,


s: Personified dim shapes--you hidden orchestras,


s: You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert,


s: Blending with Nature's rhythmus all the tongues of nations;


s: You chords left as by vast composers--you choruses,


s: You formless, free, religious dances--you from the Orient,


s: You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts,


s: You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry,


s: Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls,


s: Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire,


s: Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,


s: Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,


s: The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,


s: To flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile.


s: Victoria! seest thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?


s: Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?


s: (Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony,


s: I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals,


s: I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love,


s: I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.


s: Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,


s: On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,


s: All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know,


s: The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,


s: The players playing, all the world's musicians,


s: The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,


s: All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,


s: The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,


s: And for their solvent setting earth's own diapason,


s: Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,


s: And man and art with Nature fused again.


s: (The Almighty leader now for once has signal'd with his wand.)


s: The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,


s: (I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself,


s: This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)


s: Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music,


s: (The voice, O tender voices, memory's loving voices,


s: Last miracle of all, O dearest mother's, sister's, voices;)


s: The twittering bird, the hawk's sharp scream,


s: The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,


s: All songs of current lands come sounding round me,


s: The German airs of friendship, wine and love,


s: Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles,


s: Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, and o'er the rest,


s: Across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion,


s: Stalks Norma brandishing the dagger in her hand.


s: I see poor crazed Lucia's eyes' unnatural gleam,


s: Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel'd.


s: I see where Ernani walking the bridal garden,


s: To crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven,


s: The clear electric base and baritone of the world,


s: From Spanish chestnut trees' dense shade,


s: By old and heavy convent walls a wailing song,


s: Awaking from her woes at last retriev'd Amina sings,


s: The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,


s: Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni's self I hear.)


s: The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss,


s: The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets.


s: I see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the


s: I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd with frantic


s: I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs,


s: I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet.


s: As they fall on their knees and rise again.


s: I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling,


s: The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen,


s: Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me,


s: And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi!


s: All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee,


s: But now it seems to me sound leads o'er all the rest.)


s: oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn,


s: The Creation in billows of godhood laves me.


s: Give me to hold all sounds, (I madly struggling cry,)


s: Fill me with all the voices of the universe,


s: Endow me with their throbbings, Nature's also,


s: And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream,


s: And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury,


s: And those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor,


s: And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs,


s: And all the artless plaints of love and grief and death,


s: Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,


s: Nourish'd henceforth by our celestial dream.


s: Haply what thou hast heard O soul was not the sound of winds,


s: Which let us go forth in the bold day and write.


s: Singing the great achievements of the present,


s: Singing the strong light works of engineers,


s: Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)


s: In the Old World the east the Suez canal,


s: The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;


s: Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,


s: The Past--the dark unfathom'd retrospect!


s: The teeming gulf--the sleepers and the shadows!


s: The past--the infinite greatness of the past!


s: For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?


s: Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.


s: Not you alone proud truths of the world,


s: Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,


s: But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables,


s: The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams,


s: The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;


s: O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun!


s: O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,


s: You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd


s: Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams!


s: You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!


s: Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?


s: The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,


s: The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,


s: The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,


s: You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,


s: You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,


s: You, not for trade or transportation only,


s: But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul.


s: I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd,


s: I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd,


s: I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great


s: I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pass the


s: I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,


s: enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,


s: Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,


s: Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,


s: Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,


s: The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)


s: Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,


s: Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,


s: Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.


s: The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;


s: Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compass,


s: Lands found and nations born, thou born America,


s: For purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd,


s: Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish'd.


s: Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty,


s: Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,


s: With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,


s: Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.


s: Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,


s: Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,


s: Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,


s: Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?


s: Who Justify these restless explorations?


s: Who speak the secret of impassive earth?


s: Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?


s: What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a


s: After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,)


s: Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,


s: The true son of God shall come singing his songs.


s: Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors,


s: All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd,


s: The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be


s: Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and compacted by


s: (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,


s: He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)


s: Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more,


s: The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.


s: Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!


s: (No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)


s: Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,


s: The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.


s: Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,


s: The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth's lands,


s: The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many affluents,


s: The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying,


s: On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia,


s: To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal,


s: The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,


s: The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,


s: Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be fill'd,


s: The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest,


s: Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.


s: The mediaeval navigators rise before me,


s: The world of 1492, with its awaken'd enterprise,


s: Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,


s: With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes,


s: Spreading around with every look of thine a golden world,


s: Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,


s: Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,


s: (History's type of courage, action, faith,)


s: Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,


s: His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,


s: His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain'd,


s: (Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes,


s: Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?


s: Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,


s: And fills the earth with use and beauty.)


s: Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,


s: Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,


s: O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,


s: Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,


s: Of man, the voyage of his mind's return,


s: Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions,


s: Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,


s: Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,


s: Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.


s: Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,


s: But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.


s: Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,


s: Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,


s: Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,


s: I and my soul to range in range of thee.


s: Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)


s: Thou pulse--thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,


s: That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,


s: Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,


s: I could not launch, to those, superior universes?


s: Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,


s: At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,


s: But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,


s: Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,


s: And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.


s: What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?


s: What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?


s: Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev'd,


s: The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done,


s: Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain'd,


s: Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?


s: O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?


s: Disportest thou on waters such as those?


s: Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?


s: Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!


s: Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!


s: Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!


s: Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land!


s: O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!


s: O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!


s: Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!


s: Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!


s: Cut the hawsers--haul out--shake out every sail!


s: Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?


s: Sail forth--steer for the deep waters only,


s: Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,


s: For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,


s: And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.


s: O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?


s: Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,


s: Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,


s: Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,


s: I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,


s: Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,


s: Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,


s: My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;


s: Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,


s: Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations,


s: In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not,


s: Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.


s: All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee,


s: My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,


s: Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee.


s: The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,


s: The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,


s: A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,


s: By me and these the work so far accomplish'd,


s: By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd,


s: By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.


s: Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,


s: One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;


s: With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,


s: Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,


s: Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;


s: For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,


s: The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost,


s: Let the old timbers part, I will not part,


s: I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,


s: Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?


s: I know not even my own work past or present,


s: Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,


s: Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,


s: And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?


s: As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,


s: Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,


s: And on the distant waves sail countless ships,


s: And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.


s: How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still,


s: How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.


s: from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,


s: The night pervades them and infolds them.


s: The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on


s: The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,


s: And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.


s: The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,


s: The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?


s: And the murder'd person, how does he sleep?


s: The female that loves unrequited sleeps,


s: And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,


s: The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,


s: And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.


s: I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and


s: I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,


s: The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.


s: Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,


s: The earth recedes from me into the night,


s: I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,


s: I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!


s: I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,


s: Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,


s: Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,


s: I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet besides,


s: And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,


s: Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting


s: music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!


s: I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,


s: The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,


s: He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,


s: I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly,


s: My truant lover has come, and it is dark.


s: Double yourself and receive me darkness,


s: Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.


s: He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,


s: My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,


s: I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.


s: Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?


s: I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,


s: I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.


s: I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,


s: Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake.


s: It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman's,


s: I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,


s: What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?


s: He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd, he holds out while his strength


s: His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is


s: Swiftly and ought of sight is borne the brave corpse.


s: Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.


s: The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,


s: The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts.


s: Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,


s: Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrench'd


s: His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops,


s: He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch'd


s: He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by


s: The same at last and at last when peace is declared,


s: The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,


s: Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together,


s: A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,


s: My mother look'd in delight and amazement at the stranger,


s: She look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and


s: The more she look'd upon her she loved her,


s: Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,


s: O my mother was loth to have her go away,


s: But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.


s: A show of the summer softness--a contact of something unseen--an


s: I am jealous and overwhelm'd with friendliness,


s: And will go gallivant with the light and air myself.


s: O love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me,


s: Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams,


s: The sailor sails, the exile returns home,


s: The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with


s: home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,


s: To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill'd ships,


s: The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.


s: The homeward bound and the outward bound,


s: The actor and actress, those through with their parts and those


s: The great already known and the great any time after to-day,


s: The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form'd, the homely,


s: The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,


s: I swear they are averaged now--one is no better than the other,


s: The night and sleep have liken'd them and restored them.


s: The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.


s: The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.


s: It comes from its embower'd garden and looks pleasantly on itself


s: Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting,and perfect and


s: The head well-grown proportion'd and plumb, and the bowels and


s: The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place,


s: The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,


s: They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as


s: The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with


s: measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with


s: Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,


s: Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?


s: I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,


s: I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,


s: I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.


s: Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever


s: Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.


s: To think of time--of all that retrospection,


s: To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.


s: Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?


s: Have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you?


s: Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?


s: If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.


s: To think that the sun rose in the east--that men and women were


s: flexible, real, alive--that every thing was alive,


s: Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement,


s: The dull nights go over and the dull days also,


s: The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,


s: Medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long


s: The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,


s: The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it,


s: It is palpable as the living are palpable.


s: The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,


s: To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials,


s: To think how eager we are in building our houses,


s: To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent.


s: (I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or


s: I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)


s: A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,


s: Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river,


s: Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell,


s: The gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living


s: A minute--no one moves or speaks--it is done,


s: He is decently put away--is there any thing more?


s: Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the


s: last, sicken'd, was help'd by a contribution,


s: Died, aged forty-one years--and that was his funeral.


s: Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap,


s: wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen,


s: Boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you


s: loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind,


s: The vulgar and the refined, what you call sin and what you call


s: goodness, to think how wide a difference,


s: To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie


s: Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or


s: planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family?


s: These also flow onward to others, you and I flow onward,


s: But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.


s: Your farm, profits, crops--to think how engross'd you are,


s: What will be will be well, for what is is well,


s: To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.


s: The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,


s: You are not thrown to the winds, you gather certainly and safely


s: Yourself! yourself!. yourself, for ever and ever!


s: It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and


s: The preparations have every one been justified,


s: The guest that was coming, he waited long, he is now housed,


s: The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,


s: The law of the living cannot be eluded, it is eternal,


s: The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,


s: The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,


s: Slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,


s: The great masters and kosmos are well as they go, the heroes and


s: The known leaders and inventors and the rich owners and pious and


s: For I have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough.


s: If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray'd,


s: Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,


s: The whole universe indicates that it is good,


s: The past and the present indicate that it is good.


s: How beautiful and perfect are the animals!


s: How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!


s: I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!


s: Walk out with me toward the unknown region,


s: Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?


s: Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,


s: Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,


s: All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land.


s: All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,


s: Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.


s: In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,


s: Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear,


s: Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,


s: Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,


s: I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,


s: Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,


s: With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star,


s: (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;


s: Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any,


s: Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments,


s: As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,


s: But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days


s: Consolator most mild, the promis'd one advancing,


s: With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,


s: All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,


s: Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and


s: crucified, and many times shall be again,


s: All the world have I given up for my dear brothers' and sisters'


s: For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and


s: Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,


s: Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,


s: Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,


s: Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including


s: Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,


s: Breathe my breath also through these songs.


s: Of him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead,


s: And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he was


s: Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as


s: And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;


s: And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly


s: Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.


s: Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,


s: Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,


s: Matter is conqueror--matter, triumphant only, continues onward.


s: Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,


s: The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm'd, uncertain,


s: The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,


s: Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.


s: I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,


s: Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,--


s: Old age, alarm'd, uncertain--a young woman's voice, appealing to


s: A young man's voice, Shall I not escape?


s: I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;


s: But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the


s: As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has


s: And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.


s: face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant


s: I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their


s: swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day


s: the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,


s: I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are


s: deaths of little children are provided for,


s: I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of


s: them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has


s: gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,


s: I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any


s: time, is provided for in the inherences of things,


s: Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,


s: That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long


s: But now the chorus I hear and am elated,


s: I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,


s: contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;


s: I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think


s: What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?


s: Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect


s: Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,


s: I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,


s: Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,


s: It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,


s: Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.


s: Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,


s: Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to


s: O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;


s: From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,


s: Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you 'ust feel it,


s: I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,


s: I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,


s: I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is


s: eternal, you yourself will surely escape,


s: The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.


s: The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,


s: Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,


s: You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,


s: I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,


s: I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.


s: The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,


s: The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;


s: How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!


s: Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will


s: Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President,


s: Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on--and I now


s: From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,


s: With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,


s: Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,


s: I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;


s: (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)


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: Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou


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: 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 westernr sky,


s: Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,


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


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


s: Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind,


s: athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,


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


s: Thee in thy ultimate, (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: The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war


s: The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy


s: breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,


s: Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face


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: 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: Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,


s: The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,


s: Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand


s: ankle-deep in the water, pois'd on strong legs,


s: The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,


s: Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!


s: Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,


s: The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,


s: And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;


s: O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.


s: Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,


s: Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy


s: I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,


s: As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of


s: Thou that with fructifying heat and light,


s: O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South,


s: O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains,


s: O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,


s: Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas,


s: Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,


s: Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces!


s: Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,


s: The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved


s: The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face,


s: The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or


s: The face of an amour, the face of veneration,


s: The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,


s: The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,


s: A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper,


s: I see them and complain not, and am content with all.


s: This now is too lamentable a face for a man,


s: Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,


s: Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.


s: This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage,


s: Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.


s: This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,


s: Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.


s: This face is bitten by vermin and worms,


s: And this is some murderer's knife with a half-pull'd scabbard.


s: This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,


s: Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas'd and


s: I see 'neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.


s: And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,


s: I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,


s: The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,


s: And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,


s: This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.


s: These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,


s: They show their descent from the Master himself.


s: In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.


s: Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,


s: Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,


s: She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets,


s: Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to 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: 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: Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,


s: Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.


s: I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,


s: Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,


s: Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.


s: Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds


s: Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life


s: Was fill'd with aspirations high, unform'd ideals,


s: Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,


s: Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,


s: While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,


s: The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,


s: I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,


s: I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;


s: Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,


s: Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.


s: What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,


s: Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,


s: I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;


s: Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,


s: Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,


s: The heart of man and woman all for love,


s: No other theme but love--knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.


s: O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!


s: The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,


s: No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.


s: Blow again trumpeter--conjure war's alarums.


s: Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,


s: I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the


s: Nor war alone--thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every


s: O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,


s: Thou melt'st my heart, my brain--thou movest, drawest, changest


s: And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,


s: Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,


s: I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the


s: Utter defeat upon me weighs--all lost--the foe victorious,


s: (Yet 'mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,


s: Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,


s: Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,


s: A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes,


s: Marches of victory--man disenthral'd--the conqueror at last,


s: Hymns to the universal God from universal man--all joy!


s: A reborn race appears--a perfect world, all joy!


s: Women and men in wisdom innocence and health--all joy!


s: Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy!


s: Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!


s: Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,


s: Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,


s: By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,


s: By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.


s: Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,


s: (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)


s: Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,


s: Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes,


s: To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.


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 slivery 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 openings


s: I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the


s: I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,


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


s: O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable


s: swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the


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


s: The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,


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


s: A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn,


s: slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful


s: O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and


s: I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,


s: Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.


s: Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,


s: I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,


s: Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,


s: Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an


s: island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,


s: Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,


s: The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining


s: The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the


s: ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd,


s: The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the


s: passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,


s: The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd,


s: beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,


s: City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!


s: Standing aloof, denying portions so long,


s: Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,


s: Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see


s: that there are really no liars or lies after all,


s: And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,


s: That which eludes this verse and any verse,


s: Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,


s: Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,


s: Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,


s: Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted,


s: Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd,


s: Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.


s: Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude,


s: Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage,


s: Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,


s: As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,


s: Two little breaths of words comprising it,


s: Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.


s: How many ships have sail'd and sunk for it!


s: How many travelers started from their homes and neer return'd!


s: How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!


s: What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it!


s: How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it--and


s: How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!


s: How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and


s: Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,


s: The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,


s: Who has gone farthest? for I would go farther,


s: And who has been happiest? O I think it is I--I think no one was


s: And who has been bold and true? for I would be the boldest and


s: devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth.


s: Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,


s: Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,


s: You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,


s: Of the President with pale face asking secretly to himself, What


s: Of the frivolous Judge--of the corrupt Congressman, Governor,


s: Mayor--of such as these standing helpless and exposed,


s: Of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,)


s: Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the


s: intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality;


s: Of the true New World--of the Democracies resplendent en-masse,


s: Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them,


s: They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness,


s: They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos,


s: They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive,


s: They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and


s: Strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of


s: Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey'd.


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


s: (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor


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: Out of the feudal wrecks and heap'd-up skeletons of kings,


s: Out of that old entire European debris, the shatter'd mummeries,


s: Ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,


s: (A glimpse as of thy Mother's face Columbia,


s: Lag'd'st thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee?


s: Ah, but thou hast thyself now appear'd to us--we know thee,


s: Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself,


s: Thou waitest there as everywhere thy time.


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


s: Again the freshness and the odors, 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: From Far Dakota's Canyons  [June 25, 1876]


s: Haply to-day a mournful wall, 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 scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,


s: Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so


s: Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and


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: 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: 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: These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,


s: These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,


s: I know thee, savage spirit--we have communed together,


s: Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;


s: Wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art?


s: To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?


s: But thou that revelest here--spirit that form'd this scene,


s: As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,


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


s: Around me I hear that eclat 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 lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these


s: This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,


s: Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,


s: As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,


s: A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.


s: O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?


s: Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? --and yet it is


s: O soul, we have positively appear'd--that is enough.


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 Freedom, completely arm'd and victorious and very haughty,


s: with Law on one side and Peace on the other,


s: A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste;


s: What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?


s: I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions,


s: Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God,


s: His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the


s: With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the


s: With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all


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: 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 reveille at dawn,


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 battle-fields 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: 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 the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the


s: sounding and resounding, keep on and on,


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, and


s: And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be


s: convuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions,


s: Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,


s: Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to


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 this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the


s: Of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake,


s: Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected,


s: Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of


s: Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and


s: Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,


s: Inflating my throat, you divine average,


s: You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.


s: Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,


s: Natural life of me faithfully praising things,


s: Corroborating forever the triumph of things.


s: Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber'd spirits,


s: Illustrious the passing light--illustrious the pale reflection on


s: Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.


s: In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,


s: In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,


s: The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!


s: To speak--to walk--to seize something by the hand!


s: To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh!


s: To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!


s: To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love.


s: Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself


s: How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!


s: O amazement of things--even the least particle!


s: I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass


s: I too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting,


s: I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the


s: I too have felt the resistless call of myself.


s: As I have lived, as I have look'd through my windows my eyes,


s: I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,


s: I say Nature continues, glory continues,


s: For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,


s: O setting sun! though the time has come,


s: Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,


s: To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,


s: To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,


s: (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,


s: To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth,


s: I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,


s: After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure,


s: With nothing to show to devise from its idle years,


s: Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,


s: Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you,


s: And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,


s: I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.


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: In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence,


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: Nor alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars,


s: When as order'd forward, after a long march,


s: And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety,


s: Now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world,


s: Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of all,


s: For presently O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the


s: The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,


s: The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,


s: (Full well they know that message in the darkness,


s: Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the


s: Of what underlies the precedent songs--of my aims in them,


s: Of the seed I have sought to plant in them,


s: Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them,


s: (For them, for them have I lived, in them my work is done,)


s: Of many an aspiration fond, of many a dream and plan;


s: To compact you, ye parted, diverse lives,


s: To put rapport the mountains and rocks and streams,


s: And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,


s: The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,


s: Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.


s: What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the Unknown?


s: And what are those of life but for Death?


s: These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,


s: For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.


s: Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,)


s: Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas,


s: Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,


s: Duly again to port and hawser's tie returning;


s: Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,


s: To port and hawser's tie no more returning,


s: Depart upon thy endless cruise old Sailor.


s: To conclude, I announce what comes after me.


s: I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all,


s: I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and


s: And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.


s: I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,


s: I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd,


s: affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd.


s: I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,


s: I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,


s: Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.


s: Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,


s: At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,


s: Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,


s: Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,


s: To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set


s: To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection


s: To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of


s: So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,


s: Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making


s: What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with


s: (Is it night? are we here together alone?)


s: I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.


s: Enough O gliding present--enough O summ'd-up past.


s: Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,


s: I give it especially to you, do not forget me,


s: I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,


s: I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras


s: ascending, while others doubtless await me,


s: An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts


s: I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.


s: Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,


s: A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming,


s: One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,


s: Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water--healthy air and soil!


s: Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!


s: Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)


s: The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,


s: To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,


s: To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,


s: To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I'd rear


s: High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,


s: Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,


s: A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,


s: My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,


s: Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,


s: The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia


s: The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,


s: The undiminish'd faith--the groups of loving friends.


s: But the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.


s: This latent mine--these unlaunch'd voices--passionate powers,


s: Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,


s: (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)


s: These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,


s: Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,


s: As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,


s: Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,


s: But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,


s: Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,


s: Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death?


s: Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?


s: Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?


s: Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,


s: Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,


s: More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,


s: The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.


s: Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,


s: As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,


s: The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.


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: The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed


s: The appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game;


s: Garner'd for now and thee--To think of it!


s: Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;


s: After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,


s: Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.


s: Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;


s: Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;


s: The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;


s: The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;


s: The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.


s: As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,


s: Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!


s: Steaming the northern rapids--(an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,


s: A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,


s: Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)


s: Again 'tis just at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak,


s: Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--I press through


s: Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman


s: Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.


s: Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,


s: To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,


s: These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,


s: Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,


s: Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,


s: You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!


s: Many a muffled confession--many a sob and whisper'd word,


s: How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!


s: On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!


s: And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,


s: Nor you, ye lost designs alone--nor failures, aspirations;


s: I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming;


s: Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,


s: Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,


s: Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,


s: Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the


s: Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.


s: Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral,


s: By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,


s: And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemble--some


s: Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.


s: Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,


s: Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:


s: Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,


s: The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.


s: Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic


s: geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,


s: Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor


s: (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the


s: The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--


s: Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the


s: Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:


s: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,


s: Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.


s: Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,


s: Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,


s: (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)


s: Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,


s: Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;


s: Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all


s: Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet


s: And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,


s: And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,


s: The first and last confession of the globe,


s: Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms,


s: As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,


s: From that great play on history's stage eterne,


s: Victor's and vanquish'd--Lincoln's and Lee's--now thou with them,


s: Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,


s: (Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,)


s: Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling,


s: Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot,


s: (Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the same--the heir


s: The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line,


s: Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--e'en in defeat


s: Wherever Freedom, pois'd by Toleration, sway'd by Law,


s: Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,


s: These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,


s: For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;


s: What hurrying human tides, or day or night!


s: What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!


s: What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!


s: What curious questioning glances--glints of love!


s: Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!


s: Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!


s: Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!