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+LEAVES OF GRASS
+
+Come, said my soul,
+Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
+That should I after return,
+Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
+There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
+(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
+Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
+Ever and ever yet the verses owning--as, first, I here and now
+Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+One’s-Self I Sing
+
+One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
+Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
+
+Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
+Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say
+	the Form complete is worthier far,
+The Female equally with the Male I sing.
+
+Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
+Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
+The Modern Man I sing.
+
+
+
+
+As I Ponder’d in Silence
+
+As I ponder’d in silence,
+Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
+A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,
+Terrible in beauty, age, and power,
+The genius of poets of old lands,
+As to me directing like flame its eyes,
+With finger pointing to many immortal songs,
+And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,
+Know’st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?
+And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,
+The making of perfect soldiers.
+
+Be it so, then I answer’d,
+I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,
+Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance
+	and retreat, victory deferr’d and wavering,
+(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the
+	field the world,
+For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,
+Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,
+I above all promote brave soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+In Cabin’d Ships at Sea
+
+In cabin’d ships at sea,
+The boundless blue on every side expanding,
+With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,
+Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine,
+Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,
+She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under
+	many a star at night,
+By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,
+In full rapport at last.
+
+Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts,
+Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,
+The sky o’erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,
+We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,
+The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the
+	briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,
+The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,
+The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
+And this is ocean’s poem.
+
+Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,
+You not a reminiscence of the land alone,
+You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos’d I know not
+	whither, yet ever full of faith,
+Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!
+Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it
+	here in every leaf;)
+Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the
+	imperious waves,
+Chant on, sail on, bear o’er the boundless blue from me to every sea,
+This song for mariners and all their ships.
+
+
+
+
+To Foreign Lands
+
+I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle the New World,
+And to define America, her athletic Democracy,
+Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.
+
+
+
+
+To a Historian
+
+You who celebrate bygones,
+Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life
+	that has exhibited itself,
+Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,
+	rulers and priests,
+I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself
+	in his own rights,
+Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,
+	(the great pride of man in himself,)
+Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
+I project the history of the future.
+
+
+
+
+To Thee Old Cause
+
+To thee old cause!
+Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,
+Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,
+Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,
+After a strange sad war, great war for thee,
+(I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be
+	really fought, for thee,)
+These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.
+
+(A war O soldiers not for itself alone,
+Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)
+
+Thou orb of many orbs!
+Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!
+Around the idea of thee the war revolving,
+With all its angry and vehement play of causes,
+(With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,)
+These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one,
+Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,
+As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,
+Around the idea of thee.
+
+
+
+
+Eidolons
+
+	I met a seer,
+Passing the hues and objects of the world,
+The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
+	To glean eidolons.
+
+	Put in thy chants said he,
+No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,
+Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,
+	That of eidolons.
+
+	Ever the dim beginning,
+Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
+Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
+	Eidolons! eidolons!
+
+	Ever the mutable,
+Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
+Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
+	Issuing eidolons.
+
+	Lo, I or you,
+Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
+We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
+	But really build eidolons.
+
+	The ostent evanescent,
+The substance of an artist’s mood or savan’s studies long,
+Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils,
+	To fashion his eidolon.
+
+	Of every human life,
+(The units gather’d, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)
+The whole or large or small summ’d, added up,
+	In its eidolon.
+
+	The old, old urge,
+Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,
+From science and the modern still impell’d,
+	The old, old urge, eidolons.
+
+	The present now and here,
+America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
+Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
+	To-day’s eidolons.
+
+	These with the past,
+Of vanish’d lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
+Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages,
+	Joining eidolons.
+
+	Densities, growth, facades,
+Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
+Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
+	Eidolons everlasting.
+
+	Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,
+The visible but their womb of birth,
+Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
+	The mighty earth-eidolon.
+
+	All space, all time,
+(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
+Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)
+	Fill’d with eidolons only.
+
+	The noiseless myriads,
+The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
+The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,
+	The true realities, eidolons.
+
+	Not this the world,
+Nor these the universes, they the universes,
+Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
+	Eidolons, eidolons.
+
+	Beyond thy lectures learn’d professor,
+Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,
+Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,
+	The entities of entities, eidolons.
+
+	Unfix’d yet fix’d,
+Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
+Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
+	Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.
+
+	The prophet and the bard,
+Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
+Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,
+	God and eidolons.
+
+	And thee my soul,
+Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
+Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
+	Thy mates, eidolons.
+
+	Thy body permanent,
+The body lurking there within thy body,
+The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
+	An image, an eidolon.
+
+	Thy very songs not in thy songs,
+No special strains to sing, none for itself,
+But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
+	A round full-orb’d eidolon.
+
+
+
+
+For Him I Sing
+
+For him I sing,
+I raise the present on the past,
+(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)
+With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,
+To make himself by them the law unto himself.
+
+
+
+
+When I Read the Book
+
+When I read the book, the biography famous,
+And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?
+And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
+(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
+Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
+Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
+I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
+
+
+
+
+Beginning My Studies
+
+Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
+The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
+The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
+The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
+I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
+But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
+
+
+
+
+Beginners
+
+How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)
+How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
+How they inure to themselves as much as to any--what a paradox
+	appears their age,
+How people respond to them, yet know them not,
+How there is something relentless in their fate all times,
+How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
+And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same
+	great purchase.
+
+
+
+
+To the States
+
+To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
+	much, obey little,
+Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
+Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
+	afterward resumes its liberty.
+
+
+
+
+On Journeys Through the States
+
+On journeys through the States we start,
+(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
+Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
+We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.
+
+We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,
+And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the
+	seasons, and effuse as much?
+
+We dwell a while in every city and town,
+We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the
+	Mississippi, and the Southern States,
+We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
+We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,
+We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the
+	body and the soul,
+Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,
+And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
+And may be just as much as the seasons.
+
+
+
+
+To a Certain Cantatrice
+
+Here, take this gift,
+I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,
+One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the
+	progress and freedom of the race,
+Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
+But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any.
+
+
+
+
+Me Imperturbe
+
+Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
+Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
+Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,
+Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less
+	important than I thought,
+Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee,
+	or far north or inland,
+A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these
+	States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,
+Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,
+To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as
+	the trees and animals do.
+
+
+
+
+Savantism
+
+Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and
+	nestling close, always obligated,
+Thither hours, months, years--thither trades, compacts,
+	establishments, even the most minute,
+Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;
+Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,
+As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.
+
+
+
+
+The Ship Starting
+
+Lo, the unbounded sea,
+On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even
+	her moonsails.
+The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately--
+	below emulous waves press forward,
+They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.
+
+
+
+
+I Hear America Singing
+
+I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
+Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
+The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
+The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
+The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
+	singing on the steamboat deck,
+The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as
+	he stands,
+The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning,
+	or at noon intermission or at sundown,
+The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
+	or of the girl sewing or washing,
+Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
+The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young
+	fellows, robust, friendly,
+Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
+
+
+
+
+What Place Is Besieged?
+
+What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
+Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,
+And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,
+And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.
+
+
+
+
+Still Though the One I Sing
+
+Still though the one I sing,
+(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,
+I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O
+	quenchless, indispensable fire!)
+
+
+
+
+Shut Not Your Doors
+
+Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
+For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet
+	needed most, I bring,
+Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
+The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
+A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
+But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.
+
+
+
+
+Poets to Come
+
+Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
+Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
+But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
+	before known,
+Arouse! for you must justify me.
+
+I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
+I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
+
+I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
+	casual look upon you and then averts his face,
+Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+Expecting the main things from you.
+
+
+
+
+To You
+
+Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why
+	should you not speak to me?
+And why should I not speak to you?
+
+
+
+
+Thou Reader
+
+Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
+Therefore for thee the following chants.
+
+
+
+
+Starting from Paumanok
+
+Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,
+Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
+After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
+Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,
+Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner
+	in California,
+Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from
+	the spring,
+Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
+Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,
+Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of
+	mighty Niagara,
+Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and
+	strong-breasted bull,
+Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,
+	my amaze,
+Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the
+	mountain-hawk,
+And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the
+	swamp-cedars,
+Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
+
+Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
+The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
+Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
+This then is life,
+Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.
+
+How curious! how real!
+Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.
+
+See revolving the globe,
+The ancestor-continents away group’d together,
+The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus
+	between.
+
+See, vast trackless spaces,
+As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,
+Countless masses debouch upon them,
+They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.
+
+See, projected through time,
+For me an audience interminable.
+
+With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,
+Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,
+One generation playing its part and passing on,
+Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,
+With faces turn’d sideways or backward towards me to listen,
+With eyes retrospective towards me.
+
+Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!
+Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
+For you a programme of chants.
+
+Chants of the prairies,
+Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea,
+Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,
+Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant,
+Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.
+
+Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,
+Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring,
+Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,
+And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect
+	lovingly with you.
+
+I conn’d old times,
+I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,
+Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.
+
+In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?
+Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.
+
+Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
+Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
+Language-shapers on other shores,
+Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
+I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left
+	wafted hither,
+I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,)
+Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more
+	than it deserves,
+Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
+I stand in my place with my own day here.
+
+Here lands female and male,
+Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of
+	materials,
+Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,
+The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,
+The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,
+Yes here comes my mistress the soul.
+
+The soul,
+Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer
+	than water ebbs and flows.
+I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the
+	most spiritual poems,
+And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
+For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and
+	of immortality.
+
+I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any
+	circumstances be subjected to another State,
+And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by
+	night between all the States, and between any two of them,
+And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of
+	weapons with menacing points,
+And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
+And a song make I of the One form’d out of all,
+The fang’d and glittering One whose head is over all,
+Resolute warlike One including and over all,
+(However high the head of any else that head is over all.)
+
+I will acknowledge contemporary lands,
+I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously
+	every city large and small,
+And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is heroism
+	upon land and sea,
+And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.
+
+I will sing the song of companionship,
+I will show what alone must finally compact these,
+I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love,
+	indicating it in me,
+I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were
+	threatening to consume me,
+I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,
+I will give them complete abandonment,
+I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,
+For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?
+And who but I should be the poet of comrades?
+
+I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
+I advance from the people in their own spirit,
+Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
+
+Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,
+I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,
+I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--and I say
+	there is in fact no evil,
+(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or
+	to me, as any thing else.)
+
+I too, following many and follow’d by many, inaugurate a religion, I
+	descend into the arena,
+(It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there, the
+	winner’s pealing shouts,
+Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)
+
+Each is not for its own sake,
+I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake.
+
+I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
+None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough,
+None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain
+	the future is.
+
+I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be
+	their religion,
+Otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur;
+(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,
+Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)
+
+What are you doing young man?
+Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
+These ostensible realities, politics, points?
+Your ambition or business whatever it may be?
+
+It is well--against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,
+But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion’s sake,
+For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
+	life of the earth,
+Any more than such are to religion.
+
+What do you seek so pensive and silent?
+What do you need camerado?
+Dear son do you think it is love?
+
+Listen dear son--listen America, daughter or son,
+It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it
+	satisfies, it is great,
+But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,
+It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and
+	provides for all.
+
+Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,
+The following chants each for its kind I sing.
+
+My comrade!
+For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising
+	inclusive and more resplendent,
+The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.
+
+Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,
+Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,
+Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,
+Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we
+	know not of,
+Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,
+These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.
+
+Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,
+Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
+Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world,
+After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.
+
+O such themes--equalities! O divine average!
+Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon, or setting,
+Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,
+I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and
+	cheerfully pass them forward.
+
+As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,
+I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in
+	the briers hatching her brood.
+
+I have seen the he-bird also,
+I have paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and
+	joyfully singing.
+
+And while I paus’d it came to me that what he really sang for was
+	not there only,
+Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,
+But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
+A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.
+
+Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and
+	joyfully singing.
+
+Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,
+For those who belong here and those to come,
+I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger
+	and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.
+
+I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,
+And your songs outlaw’d offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes,
+	and carry you with me the same as any.
+
+I will make the true poem of riches,
+To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward
+	and is not dropt by death;
+I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the
+	bard of personality,
+And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of
+	the other,
+And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d
+	to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,
+And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
+	can be none in the future,
+And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to
+	beautiful results,
+And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,
+And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
+	compact,
+And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
+	as profound as any.
+
+I will not make poems with reference to parts,
+But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble,
+And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to
+	all days,
+And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has
+	reference to the soul,
+Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there
+	is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.
+
+Was somebody asking to see the soul?
+See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts,
+	the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.
+
+All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;
+How can the real body ever die and be buried?
+
+Of your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,
+Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and
+	pass to fitting spheres,
+Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
+	moment of death.
+
+Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the
+	meaning, the main concern,
+Any more than a man’s substance and life or a woman’s substance and
+	life return in the body and the soul,
+Indifferently before death and after death.
+
+Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and
+	includes and is the soul;
+Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
+	of it!
+
+Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!
+
+Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?
+Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
+Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
+Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.
+
+Interlink’d, food-yielding lands!
+Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!
+Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple
+	and the grape!
+Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of
+	those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!
+Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
+Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west
+	Colorado winds!
+Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!
+Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
+Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and
+	Connecticut!
+Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!
+Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen’s land!
+Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones!
+The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb’d!
+The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and
+	the inexperienced sisters!
+Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d! the diverse! the
+	compact!
+The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
+O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any
+	rate include you all with perfect love!
+I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another!
+O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with
+	irrepressible love,
+Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
+Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
+	Paumanok’s sands,
+Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town,
+Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
+Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
+Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor,
+The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
+The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them,
+Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie,
+Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,
+Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me,
+Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the
+	Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
+Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every
+	new brother,
+Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they
+	unite with the old ones,
+Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,
+	coming personally to you now,
+Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
+
+With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
+For your life adhere to me,
+(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give
+	myself really to you, but what of that?
+Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)
+
+No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
+Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, forbidding, I have arrived,
+To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
+For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
+
+On my way a moment I pause,
+Here for you! and here for America!
+Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
+	harbinge glad and sublime,
+And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.
+
+The red aborigines,
+Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds
+	and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
+Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,
+	Kaqueta, Oronoco,
+Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
+Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the
+	water and the land with names.
+
+Expanding and swift, henceforth,
+Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious,
+A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching,
+A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests,
+New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.
+
+These, my voice announcing--I will sleep no more but arise,
+You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,
+	fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
+
+See, steamers steaming through my poems,
+See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,
+See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flat-boat,
+	the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village,
+See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea,
+	how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores,
+See, pastures and forests in my poems--see, animals wild and tame--see,
+	beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass,
+See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
+	with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce,
+See, the many-cylinder’d steam printing-press--see, the electric
+	telegraph stretching across the continent,
+See, through Atlantica’s depths pulses American Europe reaching,
+	pulses of Europe duly return’d,
+See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing
+	the steam-whistle,
+See, ploughmen ploughing farms--see, miners digging mines--see,
+	the numberless factories,
+See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools--see from among them
+	superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in
+	working dresses,
+See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me
+	well-belov’d, close-held by day and night,
+Hear the loud echoes of my songs there--read the hints come at last.
+
+O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
+O a word to clear one’s path ahead endlessly!
+O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
+O now I triumph--and you shall also;
+O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!
+O to haste firm holding--to haste, haste on with me.
+
+
+
+
+Song of Myself
+
+I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
+And what I assume you shall assume,
+For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
+
+I loafe and invite my soul,
+I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
+
+My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
+Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
+	parents the same,
+I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
+Hoping to cease not till death.
+
+Creeds and schools in abeyance,
+Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
+I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
+Nature without check with original energy.
+
+Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
+	perfumes,
+I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
+The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
+
+The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
+	distillation, it is odorless,
+It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
+I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
+I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
+
+The smoke of my own breath,
+Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
+My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
+	of blood and air through my lungs,
+The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
+	dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
+
+The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
+	the wind,
+A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
+The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
+The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
+	and hill-sides,
+The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
+	from bed and meeting the sun.
+
+Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
+Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
+Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
+
+Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
+	all poems,
+You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
+	of suns left,)
+You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
+	the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
+You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
+You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
+
+I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
+	beginning and the end,
+But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
+
+There was never any more inception than there is now,
+Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
+And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
+Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
+
+Urge and urge and urge,
+Always the procreant urge of the world.
+
+Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
+	increase, always sex,
+Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
+To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.
+
+Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
+	entretied, braced in the beams,
+Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
+I and this mystery here we stand.
+
+Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
+
+Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
+Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
+
+Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
+Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
+	discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
+
+Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
+Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
+	less familiar than the rest.
+
+I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing;
+As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night,
+	and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
+Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with
+	their plenty,
+Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
+That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
+And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
+Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?
+
+Trippers and askers surround me,
+People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
+	city I live in, or the nation,
+The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
+My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
+The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
+The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
+	or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
+Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
+	the fitful events;
+These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
+But they are not the Me myself.
+
+Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
+Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
+Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
+Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
+Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
+
+Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
+	linguists and contenders,
+I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
+
+I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
+And you must not be abased to the other.
+
+Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
+Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
+	even the best,
+Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
+
+I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
+How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,
+And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
+	to my bare-stript heart,
+And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
+
+Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
+	all the argument of the earth,
+And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
+And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
+And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
+	my sisters and lovers,
+And that a kelson of the creation is love,
+And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
+And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
+And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
+	poke-weed.
+
+A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
+How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
+
+I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
+	stuff woven.
+
+Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
+A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
+Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
+	and remark, and say Whose?
+
+Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
+
+Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
+And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
+Growing among black folks as among white,
+Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
+	receive them the same.
+
+And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
+
+Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
+It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
+It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
+It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
+	of their mothers’ laps,
+And here you are the mothers’ laps.
+
+This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
+Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
+Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
+
+O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
+And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
+
+I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
+And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
+	soon out of their laps.
+
+What do you think has become of the young and old men?
+And what do you think has become of the women and children?
+
+They are alive and well somewhere,
+The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
+And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
+	end to arrest it,
+And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
+
+All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
+And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
+
+Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
+I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
+
+I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and
+	am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
+And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
+The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
+
+I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
+I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
+	fathomless as myself,
+(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
+
+Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
+For me those that have been boys and that love women,
+For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
+For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
+	mothers of mothers,
+For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
+For me children and the begetters of children.
+
+Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
+I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
+And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.
+
+The little one sleeps in its cradle,
+I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
+	with my hand.
+
+The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
+I peeringly view them from the top.
+
+The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
+I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
+	has fallen.
+
+The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
+	the promenaders,
+The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
+	clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
+The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
+The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
+The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
+The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
+The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
+	passage to the centre of the crowd,
+The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
+What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in fits,
+What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
+	give birth to babes,
+What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
+	restrain’d by decorum,
+Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
+	rejections with convex lips,
+I mind them or the show or resonance of them--I come and I depart.
+
+The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
+The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
+The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
+The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.
+
+I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
+I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
+I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
+And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.
+
+Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
+Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
+In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
+Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,
+Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
+
+The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud,
+My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
+
+The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
+I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
+You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
+
+I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
+	the bride was a red girl,
+Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
+	they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
+	hanging from their shoulders,
+On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant
+	beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand,
+She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
+	descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet.
+
+The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
+I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
+Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
+And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
+And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
+And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some
+	coarse clean clothes,
+And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
+And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
+He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
+I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.
+
+Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
+Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
+Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
+
+She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
+She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
+
+Which of the young men does she like the best?
+Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
+
+Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
+You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
+
+Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
+The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
+
+The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair,
+Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.
+
+An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
+It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
+
+The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
+	sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
+They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
+They do not think whom they souse with spray.
+
+The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
+	at the stall in the market,
+I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.
+
+Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
+Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in
+	the fire.
+
+From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
+The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
+Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
+They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.
+
+The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags
+	underneath on its tied-over chain,
+The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and
+	tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
+His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
+	his hip-band,
+His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat
+	away from his forehead,
+The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of
+	his polish’d and perfect limbs.
+
+I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there,
+I go with the team also.
+
+In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
+	forward sluing,
+To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
+Absorbing all to myself and for this song.
+
+Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
+	is that you express in your eyes?
+It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
+
+My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
+	day-long ramble,
+They rise together, they slowly circle around.
+
+I believe in those wing’d purposes,
+And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
+And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,
+And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
+And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
+And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
+
+The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
+Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
+The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
+Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.
+
+The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the
+	chickadee, the prairie-dog,
+The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
+The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings,
+I see in them and myself the same old law.
+
+The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
+They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
+
+I am enamour’d of growing out-doors,
+Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
+Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and
+	mauls, and the drivers of horses,
+I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
+
+What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
+Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
+Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
+Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
+Scattering it freely forever.
+
+The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
+The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
+	whistles its wild ascending lisp,
+The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
+The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
+The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
+The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
+The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar,
+The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
+The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and
+	looks at the oats and rye,
+The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case,
+(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s
+	bed-room;)
+The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
+He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
+The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
+What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
+The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by
+	the bar-room stove,
+The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat,
+	the gate-keeper marks who pass,
+The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do
+	not know him;)
+The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
+The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their
+	rifles, some sit on logs,
+Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
+The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
+As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
+	from his saddle,
+The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their
+	partners, the dancers bow to each other,
+The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the
+	musical rain,
+The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
+The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and
+	bead-bags for sale,
+The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut
+	eyes bent sideways,
+As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for
+	the shore-going passengers,
+The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it
+	off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
+The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne
+	her first child,
+The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the
+	factory or mill,
+The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead
+	flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering
+	with blue and gold,
+The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his
+	desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
+The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
+The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions,
+The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white
+	sails sparkle!)
+The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,
+The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling
+	about the odd cent;)
+The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock
+	moves slowly,
+The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips,
+The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and
+	pimpled neck,
+The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to
+	each other,
+(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
+The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great
+	Secretaries,
+On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms,
+The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
+The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
+As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the
+	jingling of loose change,
+The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the
+	roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
+In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
+Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it
+	is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
+Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows,
+	and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
+Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in
+	the frozen surface,
+The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
+	with his axe,
+Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,
+Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through
+	those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
+Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,
+Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons
+	around them,
+In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after
+	their day’s sport,
+The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
+The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
+The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
+And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
+And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
+And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
+
+I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
+Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
+Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
+Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff
+	that is fine,
+One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the
+	largest the same,
+A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and
+	hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
+A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest
+	joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
+A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
+	leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
+A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
+At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen
+	off Newfoundland,
+At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
+At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the
+	Texan ranch,
+Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving
+	their big proportions,)
+Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands
+	and welcome to drink and meat,
+A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
+A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
+Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
+A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
+Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
+
+I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
+Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
+And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
+
+(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
+The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
+The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)
+
+These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
+	are not original with me,
+If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
+If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
+If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
+
+This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
+This the common air that bathes the globe.
+
+With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
+I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for
+	conquer’d and slain persons.
+
+Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
+I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit
+	in which they are won.
+
+I beat and pound for the dead,
+I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
+
+Vivas to those who have fail’d!
+And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
+And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
+And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
+And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
+
+This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
+It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments
+	with all,
+I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
+The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
+The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
+There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
+
+This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
+This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
+This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
+This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
+
+Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
+Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the
+	side of a rock has.
+
+Do you take it I would astonish?
+Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
+	through the woods?
+Do I astonish more than they?
+
+This hour I tell things in confidence,
+I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
+
+Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
+How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
+
+What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
+
+All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
+Else it were time lost listening to me.
+
+I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
+That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.
+
+Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity
+	goes to the fourth-remov’d,
+I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
+
+Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?
+
+Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with
+	doctors and calculated close,
+I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
+
+In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
+And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
+
+I know I am solid and sound,
+To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
+All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
+
+I know I am deathless,
+I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
+I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt
+	stick at night.
+
+I know I am august,
+I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
+I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
+(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
+	after all.)
+
+I exist as I am, that is enough,
+If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
+And if each and all be aware I sit content.
+
+One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
+And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
+	million years,
+I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
+
+My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,
+I laugh at what you call dissolution,
+And I know the amplitude of time.
+
+I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
+The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
+The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
+	into new tongue.
+
+I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
+And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
+And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
+
+I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
+We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
+I show that size is only development.
+
+Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
+It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and
+	still pass on.
+
+I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
+I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
+
+Press close bare-bosom’d night--press close magnetic nourishing night!
+Night of south winds--night of the large few stars!
+Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.
+
+Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
+Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
+Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt!
+Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
+Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
+Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
+Far-swooping elbow’d earth--rich apple-blossom’d earth!
+Smile, for your lover comes.
+
+Prodigal, you have given me love--therefore I to you give love!
+O unspeakable passionate love.
+
+Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
+We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.
+
+You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean,
+I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,
+I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
+We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
+Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
+Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
+
+Sea of stretch’d ground-swells,
+Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
+Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves,
+Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
+I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.
+
+Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation,
+Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others’ arms.
+
+I am he attesting sympathy,
+(Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that
+	supports them?)
+
+I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet
+	of wickedness also.
+
+What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
+Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
+My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait,
+I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
+
+Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
+Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over and rectified?
+
+I find one side a balance and the antipedal side a balance,
+Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
+Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.
+
+This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
+There is no better than it and now.
+
+What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such wonder,
+The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.
+
+Endless unfolding of words of ages!
+And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.
+
+A word of the faith that never balks,
+Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
+
+It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
+That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
+
+I accept Reality and dare not question it,
+Materialism first and last imbuing.
+
+Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
+Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,
+This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of
+	the old cartouches,
+These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas.
+This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a
+	mathematician.
+
+Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!
+Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
+I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
+
+Less the reminders of properties told my words,
+And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,
+And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and
+	women fully equipt,
+And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that
+	plot and conspire.
+
+Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
+Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
+No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
+No more modest than immodest.
+
+Unscrew the locks from the doors!
+Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
+
+Whoever degrades another degrades me,
+And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
+
+Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
+	and index.
+
+I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
+By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
+	counterpart of on the same terms.
+
+Through me many long dumb voices,
+Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
+Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
+Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
+And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the
+	father-stuff,
+And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
+Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
+Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
+
+Through me forbidden voices,
+Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,
+Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.
+
+I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
+I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
+Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
+
+I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
+Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
+	is a miracle.
+
+Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am
+	touch’d from,
+The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
+This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
+
+If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of
+	my own body, or any part of it,
+Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
+Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
+Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
+Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
+You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
+Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
+My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
+Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded
+	duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
+Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
+Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!
+Sun so generous it shall be you!
+Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
+You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
+Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
+Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my
+	winding paths, it shall be you!
+Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d,
+	it shall be you.
+
+I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,
+Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
+I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
+Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the
+	friendship I take again.
+
+That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
+A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics
+	of books.
+
+To behold the day-break!
+The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
+The air tastes good to my palate.
+
+Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising
+	freshly exuding,
+Scooting obliquely high and low.
+
+Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
+Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
+
+The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
+The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
+The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
+
+Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
+If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
+
+We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
+We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
+
+My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
+With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
+
+Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,
+It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
+Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?
+
+Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of
+	articulation,
+Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?
+Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,
+The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
+I underlying causes to balance them at last,
+My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,
+Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search
+	of this day.)
+
+My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,
+Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
+I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
+
+Writing and talk do not prove me,
+I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
+With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
+
+Now I will do nothing but listen,
+To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.
+
+I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames,
+	clack of sticks cooking my meals,
+I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
+I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
+Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
+Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of
+	work-people at their meals,
+The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,
+The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing
+	a death-sentence,
+The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the
+	refrain of the anchor-lifters,
+The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking
+	engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights,
+The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
+The slow march play’d at the head of the association marching two and two,
+(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)
+
+I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,)
+I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,
+It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
+
+I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
+Ah this indeed is music--this suits me.
+
+A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
+The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
+
+I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?)
+The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
+It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them,
+It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves,
+I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,
+Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,
+At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
+And that we call Being.
+
+To be in any form, what is that?
+(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
+If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
+
+Mine is no callous shell,
+I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
+They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
+
+I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
+To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
+
+Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
+Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
+Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
+My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
+	different from myself,
+On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
+Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
+Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
+Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
+Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
+Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
+Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
+They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,
+No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
+Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
+Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
+
+The sentries desert every other part of me,
+They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
+They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
+
+I am given up by traitors,
+I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the
+	greatest traitor,
+I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.
+
+You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,
+Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.
+
+Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch!
+Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
+
+Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,
+Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
+
+Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,
+Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.
+
+All truths wait in all things,
+They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
+They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
+The insignificant is as big to me as any,
+(What is less or more than a touch?)
+
+Logic and sermons never convince,
+The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
+
+(Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
+Only what nobody denies is so.)
+
+A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
+I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
+And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
+And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
+And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
+	becomes omnific,
+And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.
+
+I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,
+And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
+	of the wren,
+And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
+And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
+And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
+And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
+And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
+
+I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits,
+	grains, esculent roots,
+And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
+And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
+But call any thing back again when I desire it.
+
+In vain the speeding or shyness,
+In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
+In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones,
+In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
+In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
+In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
+In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
+In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
+In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador,
+I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
+
+I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
+	self-contain’d,
+I stand and look at them long and long.
+
+They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
+They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
+They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
+Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
+	owning things,
+Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
+	years ago,
+Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
+
+So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
+They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
+	possession.
+
+I wonder where they get those tokens,
+Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?
+
+Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
+Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
+Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
+Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
+Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.
+
+A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
+Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
+Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
+Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
+
+His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
+His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
+
+I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
+Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
+Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.
+
+Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at,
+What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass,
+What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,
+And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.
+
+My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
+I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
+I am afoot with my vision.
+
+By the city’s quadrangular houses--in log huts, camping with lumber-men,
+Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
+Weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips,
+	crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
+Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,
+Scorch’d ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the
+	shallow river,
+Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the
+	buck turns furiously at the hunter,
+Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the
+	otter is feeding on fish,
+Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
+Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the
+	beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;
+Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower’d cotton plant, over
+	the rice in its low moist field,
+Over the sharp-peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and
+	slender shoots from the gutters,
+Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav’d corn, over the
+	delicate blue-flower flax,
+Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with
+	the rest,
+Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
+Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low
+	scragged limbs,
+Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,
+Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,
+Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great
+	goldbug drops through the dark,
+Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to
+	the meadow,
+Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous
+	shuddering of their hides,
+Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle
+	the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
+Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,
+Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,
+Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it
+	myself and looking composedly down,)
+Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat
+	hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
+Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,
+Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,
+Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,
+Where the half-burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents,
+Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below;
+Where the dense-starr’d flag is borne at the head of the regiments,
+Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,
+Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,
+Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
+Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of
+	base-ball,
+At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,
+	bull-dances, drinking, laughter,
+At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the
+	juice through a straw,
+At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
+At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;
+Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,
+	screams, weeps,
+Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are
+	scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,
+Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to
+	the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,
+Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,
+Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,
+Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles
+	far and near,
+Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived
+	swan is curving and winding,
+Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her
+	near-human laugh,
+Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the
+	high weeds,
+Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with
+	their heads out,
+Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery,
+Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,
+Where the yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at
+	night and feeds upon small crabs,
+Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,
+Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over
+	the well,
+Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
+Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,
+Through the gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through the
+	office or public hall;
+Pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d with
+	the new and old,
+Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome,
+Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
+Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church,
+Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher,
+	impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting;
+Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon,
+	flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,
+Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds,
+	or down a lane or along the beach,
+My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;
+Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy, (behind me
+	he rides at the drape of the day,)
+Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the
+	moccasin print,
+By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
+Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
+Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,
+Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,
+Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,
+Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
+Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side,
+Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,
+Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the
+	diameter of eighty thousand miles,
+Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,
+Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,
+Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
+Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
+I tread day and night such roads.
+
+I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,
+And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green.
+
+I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,
+My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
+
+I help myself to material and immaterial,
+No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.
+
+I anchor my ship for a little while only,
+My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.
+
+I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a
+	pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.
+
+I ascend to the foretruck,
+I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest,
+We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,
+Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,
+The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is
+	plain in all directions,
+The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my
+	fancies toward them,
+We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to
+	be engaged,
+We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still
+	feet and caution,
+Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city,
+The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities
+	of the globe.
+
+I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,
+I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
+I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
+
+My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,
+They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.
+
+I understand the large hearts of heroes,
+The courage of present times and all times,
+How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the
+	steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
+How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of
+	days and faithful of nights,
+And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will
+	not desert you;
+How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and
+	would not give it up,
+How he saved the drifting company at last,
+How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the
+	side of their prepared graves,
+How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
+	sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;
+All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
+I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.
+
+The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
+The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her
+	children gazing on,
+The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,
+	blowing, cover’d with sweat,
+The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous
+	buckshot and the bullets,
+All these I feel or am.
+
+I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
+Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
+I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the
+	ooze of my skin,
+I fall on the weeds and stones,
+The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
+Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
+
+Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
+I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the
+	wounded person,
+My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
+
+I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,
+Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
+Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
+I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
+They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
+
+I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,
+Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
+White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared
+	of their fire-caps,
+The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
+
+Distant and dead resuscitate,
+They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.
+
+I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment,
+I am there again.
+
+Again the long roll of the drummers,
+Again the attacking cannon, mortars,
+Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.
+
+I take part, I see and hear the whole,
+The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim’d shots,
+The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,
+Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,
+The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion,
+The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
+
+Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves
+	with his hand,
+He gasps through the clot Mind not me--mind--the entrenchments.
+
+Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,
+(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
+Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
+The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)
+’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve
+	young men.
+
+Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their baggage for
+	breastworks,
+Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times their
+	number, was the price they took in advance,
+Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,
+They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and
+	seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of war.
+
+They were the glory of the race of rangers,
+Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
+Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,
+Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,
+Not a single one over thirty years of age.
+
+The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and
+	massacred, it was beautiful early summer,
+The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight.
+
+None obey’d the command to kneel,
+Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,
+A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead
+	lay together,
+The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there,
+Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away,
+These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of muskets,
+A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more
+	came to release him,
+The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood.
+
+At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies;
+That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.
+
+Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
+Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
+List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.
+
+Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)
+His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer,
+	and never was, and never will be;
+Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us.
+
+We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d,
+My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.
+
+We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water,
+On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire,
+	killing all around and blowing up overhead.
+
+Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,
+Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain,
+	and five feet of water reported,
+The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold
+	to give them a chance for themselves.
+
+The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,
+They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.
+
+Our frigate takes fire,
+The other asks if we demand quarter?
+If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
+
+Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,
+We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part
+	of the fighting.
+
+Only three guns are in use,
+One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s main-mast,
+Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry and
+	clear his decks.
+
+The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially
+	the main-top,
+They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
+
+Not a moment’s cease,
+The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.
+
+One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.
+
+Serene stands the little captain,
+He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,
+His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
+
+Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.
+
+Stretch’d and still lies the midnight,
+Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
+Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the
+	one we have conquer’d,
+The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a
+	countenance white as a sheet,
+Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin,
+The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully
+	curl’d whiskers,
+The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,
+The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
+Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh
+	upon the masts and spars,
+Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
+Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
+A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,
+Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by
+	the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,
+The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
+Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long,
+	dull, tapering groan,
+These so, these irretrievable.
+
+You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
+In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d!
+Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,
+See myself in prison shaped like another man,
+And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
+
+For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
+It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.
+
+Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him
+	and walk by his side,
+(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat
+	on my twitching lips.)
+
+Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried
+	and sentenced.
+
+Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,
+My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.
+
+Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
+I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.
+
+Enough! enough! enough!
+Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!
+Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,
+I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
+
+That I could forget the mockers and insults!
+That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
+	bludgeons and hammers!
+That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and
+	bloody crowning.
+
+I remember now,
+I resume the overstaid fraction,
+The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,
+Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.
+
+I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average
+	unending procession,
+Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
+Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,
+The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.
+
+Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
+Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.
+
+The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
+Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?
+
+Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?
+Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
+The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?
+
+Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
+They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.
+
+Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d
+	head, laughter, and naivete,
+Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
+They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
+They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of
+	the glance of his eyes.
+
+Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask--lie over!
+You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
+
+Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
+Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
+
+Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
+And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
+And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.
+
+Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
+When I give I give myself.
+
+You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
+Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
+Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
+I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
+And any thing I have I bestow.
+
+I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
+You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
+
+To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
+On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
+And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
+
+On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.
+(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)
+
+To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.
+Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
+Let the physician and the priest go home.
+
+I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
+O despairer, here is my neck,
+By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
+
+I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
+Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,
+Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
+
+Sleep--I and they keep guard all night,
+Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
+I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
+And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.
+
+I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
+And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
+
+I heard what was said of the universe,
+Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
+It is middling well as far as it goes--but is that all?
+
+Magnifying and applying come I,
+Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
+Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
+Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
+Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
+In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix
+	engraved,
+With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,
+Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
+Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
+(They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise and fly
+	and sing for themselves,)
+Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself,
+	bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,
+Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
+Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves
+	driving the mallet and chisel,
+Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or
+	a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation,
+Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me
+	than the gods of the antique wars,
+Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
+Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white
+	foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;
+By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for
+	every person born,
+Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels
+	with shirts bagg’d out at their waists,
+The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
+Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his
+	brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
+What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and
+	not filling the square rod then,
+The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,
+Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d,
+The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of
+	the supremes,
+The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the
+	best, and be as prodigious;
+By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,
+Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows.
+
+
+A call in the midst of the crowd,
+My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.
+
+Come my children,
+Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,
+Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on
+	the reeds within.
+
+Easily written loose-finger’d chords--I feel the thrum of your
+	climax and close.
+
+My head slues round on my neck,
+Music rolls, but not from the organ,
+Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
+
+Ever the hard unsunk ground,
+Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever
+	the air and the ceaseless tides,
+Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
+Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that
+	breath of itches and thirsts,
+Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides
+	and bring him forth,
+Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
+Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.
+
+Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
+To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
+Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,
+Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment
+	receiving,
+A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
+
+This is the city and I am one of the citizens,
+Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets,
+	newspapers, schools,
+The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories,
+	stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.
+
+The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats
+I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,)
+I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest
+	is deathless with me,
+What I do and say the same waits for them,
+Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.
+
+I know perfectly well my own egotism,
+Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
+And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.
+
+Not words of routine this song of mine,
+But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
+This printed and bound book--but the printer and the
+	printing-office boy?
+The well-taken photographs--but your wife or friend close and solid
+	in your arms?
+The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets--but
+	the pluck of the captain and engineers?
+In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture--but the host and
+	hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
+The sky up there--yet here or next door, or across the way?
+The saints and sages in history--but you yourself?
+Sermons, creeds, theology--but the fathomless human brain,
+And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
+
+I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
+My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
+Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,
+Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
+Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
+Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in
+	the circle of obis,
+Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
+Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and
+	austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
+Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas admirant,
+	minding the Koran,
+Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife,
+	beating the serpent-skin drum,
+Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing
+	assuredly that he is divine,
+To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting
+	patiently in a pew,
+Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till
+	my spirit arouses me,
+Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,
+Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.
+
+One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like
+	man leaving charges before a journey.
+
+Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
+Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,
+I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair
+	and unbelief.
+
+How the flukes splash!
+How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!
+
+Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
+I take my place among you as much as among any,
+The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
+And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely
+	the same.
+
+I do not know what is untried and afterward,
+But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
+
+Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, not
+	single one can it fall.
+
+It cannot fall the young man who died and was buried,
+Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
+Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back
+	and was never seen again,
+Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with
+	bitterness worse than gall,
+Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
+Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo
+	call’d the ordure of humanity,
+Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
+Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
+Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads
+	that inhabit them,
+Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.
+
+It is time to explain myself--let us stand up.
+
+What is known I strip away,
+I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
+
+The clock indicates the moment--but what does eternity indicate?
+
+We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
+There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
+
+Births have brought us richness and variety,
+And other births will bring us richness and variety.
+
+I do not call one greater and one smaller,
+That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
+
+Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?
+I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,
+All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,
+(What have I to do with lamentation?)
+
+I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.
+
+My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
+On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
+All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.
+
+Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
+Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,
+I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+Long I was hugg’d close--long and long.
+
+Immense have been the preparations for me,
+Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.
+
+Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
+For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
+My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.
+
+For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
+Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it
+	with care.
+
+All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,
+Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
+
+
+O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity!
+O manhood, balanced, florid and full.
+
+My lovers suffocate me,
+Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
+Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,
+Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and
+	chirping over my head,
+Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
+Lighting on every moment of my life,
+Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
+Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
+
+Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
+
+Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows
+	after and out of itself,
+And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
+
+I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of
+	the farther systems.
+
+Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+Outward and outward and forever outward.
+
+My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,
+He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
+If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
+	were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
+	not avail the long run,
+We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
+
+A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do
+	not hazard the span or make it impatient,
+They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
+
+See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
+Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
+
+My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
+The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,
+The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
+
+I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and
+	never will be measured.
+
+I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
+My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
+No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
+I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
+I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
+But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
+My left hand hooking you round the waist,
+My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
+
+Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
+You must travel it for yourself.
+
+It is not far, it is within reach,
+Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
+Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
+
+Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
+Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
+
+If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
+	on my hip,
+And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
+For after we start we never lie by again.
+
+This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven,
+And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
+	and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we
+	be fill’d and satisfied then?
+And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
+
+You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
+I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
+
+Sit a while dear son,
+Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
+But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you
+	with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
+
+Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
+Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
+You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every
+	moment of your life.
+
+Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
+Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
+To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
+	and laughingly dash with your hair.
+
+I am the teacher of athletes,
+He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
+He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
+
+The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power,
+	but in his own right,
+Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
+Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
+Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts,
+First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail a
+	skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,
+Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over
+	all latherers,
+And those well-tann’d to those that keep out of the sun.
+
+I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
+I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,
+My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
+
+I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while
+	I wait for a boat,
+(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you,
+Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.)
+
+I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,
+And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her
+	who privately stays with me in the open air.
+
+If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
+The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key,
+The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
+
+No shutter’d room or school can commune with me,
+But roughs and little children better than they.
+
+The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,
+The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with
+	him all day,
+The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
+In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen
+	and love them.
+
+The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine,
+On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them,
+On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.
+My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket,
+The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
+The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
+The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,
+They and all would resume what I have told them.
+
+I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
+And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
+And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
+And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
+	funeral drest in his shroud,
+And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
+And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the
+	learning of all times,
+And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it
+	may become a hero,
+And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
+And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed
+	before a million universes.
+
+And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
+For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
+(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
+	about death.)
+
+I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
+Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
+
+Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
+I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
+In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
+I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d
+	by God’s name,
+And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
+Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
+
+And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to
+	try to alarm me.
+
+To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
+I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,
+I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,
+And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.
+
+And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not
+	offend me,
+I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
+I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons.
+
+And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
+(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)
+
+I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
+O suns--O grass of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions,
+If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?
+
+Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
+Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
+Toss, sparkles of day and dusk--toss on the black stems that decay
+	in the muck,
+Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
+
+I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
+I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,
+And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
+
+There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.
+
+Wrench’d and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes,
+I sleep--I sleep long.
+
+I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
+It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
+
+Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
+To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
+
+Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
+
+Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
+It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal
+	life--it is Happiness.
+
+The past and present wilt--I have fill’d them, emptied them.
+And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
+
+Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
+Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
+(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
+
+Do I contradict myself?
+Very well then I contradict myself,
+(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
+
+I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
+
+Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
+Who wishes to walk with me?
+
+Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
+
+The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
+	and my loitering.
+
+I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
+I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
+
+The last scud of day holds back for me,
+It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
+It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
+
+I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
+I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
+
+I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
+If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
+
+You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
+But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
+And filter and fibre your blood.
+
+Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
+Missing me one place search another,
+I stop somewhere waiting for you.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To the Garden the World
+
+To the garden the world anew ascending,
+Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
+The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
+Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
+The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,
+Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
+My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
+	reasons, most wondrous,
+Existing I peer and penetrate still,
+Content with the present, content with the past,
+By my side or back of me Eve following,
+Or in front, and I following her just the same.
+
+
+
+
+From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
+
+From pent-up aching rivers,
+From that of myself without which I were nothing,
+From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole
+	among men,
+From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,
+Singing the song of procreation,
+Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people,
+Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
+Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!
+O for any and each the body correlative attracting!
+O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than all
+	else, you delighting!)
+From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,
+From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,
+Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it
+	many a long year,
+Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,
+Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,
+Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,
+Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,
+Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,
+Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,
+The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,
+The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,
+The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back
+	lying and floating,
+The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching,
+The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,
+The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it arouses,
+The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,
+(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,
+I love you, O you entirely possess me,
+O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless,
+Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more
+	lawless than we;)
+The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling.
+The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that
+	loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,
+(O I willingly stake all for you,
+O let me be lost if it must be so!
+O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
+What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust
+	each other if it must be so;)
+From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,
+The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking,
+From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it is,)
+From sex, from the warp and from the woof,
+From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,
+From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,
+From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers
+	through my hair and beard,
+From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,
+From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting
+	with excess,
+From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood,
+From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in
+	the night,
+From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,
+From the cling of the trembling arm,
+From the bending curve and the clinch,
+From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,
+From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling
+	to leave,
+(Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)
+From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,
+From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,
+Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,
+And you stalwart loins.
+
+
+
+
+I Sing the Body Electric
+
+I sing the body electric,
+The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
+They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
+And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
+
+Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
+And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
+And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
+And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
+
+The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
+	balks account,
+That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
+
+The expression of the face balks account,
+But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
+It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
+	his hips and wrists,
+It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
+	and knees, dress does not hide him,
+The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
+To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
+You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
+
+The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
+	folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
+	contour of their shape downwards,
+The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
+	the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
+	silently to and from the heave of the water,
+The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
+	horse-man in his saddle,
+Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
+The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
+	dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
+The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
+	cow-yard,
+The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
+	horses through the crowd,
+The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
+	good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
+The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
+The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
+The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
+	muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
+The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
+	suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
+The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d
+	neck and the counting;
+Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s
+	breast with the little child,
+Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
+	the firemen, and pause, listen, count.
+
+I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
+And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.
+
+This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
+The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
+	beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
+	and breadth of his manners,
+These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
+He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
+	massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
+They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
+They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
+He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
+	clear-brown skin of his face,
+He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
+	had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
+	fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
+When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
+	you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
+You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
+	by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.
+
+I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
+To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
+To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
+To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
+	round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
+I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
+
+There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
+	on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
+All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
+
+This is the female form,
+A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
+It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
+I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
+	all falls aside but myself and it,
+Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
+	was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
+Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
+	likewise ungovernable,
+Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
+	diffused, mine too diffused,
+Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
+	and deliciously aching,
+Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
+	love, white-blow and delirious nice,
+Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
+Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
+Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.
+
+This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
+This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
+	outlet again.
+
+Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
+	exit of the rest,
+You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
+
+The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
+She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
+She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
+She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.
+
+As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
+As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
+	sanity, beauty,
+See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.
+
+The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
+He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
+The flush of the known universe is in him,
+Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
+The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
+	utmost become him well, pride is for him,
+The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
+Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
+	the test of himself,
+Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
+	soundings at last only here,
+(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)
+
+The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
+No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the
+	laborers’ gang?
+Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
+Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
+	much as you,
+Each has his or her place in the procession.
+
+(All is a procession,
+The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)
+
+Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
+Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
+	no right to a sight?
+Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
+	the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
+For you only, and not for him and her?
+
+A man’s body at auction,
+(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
+I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
+
+Gentlemen look on this wonder,
+Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
+For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
+	animal or plant,
+For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.
+
+In this head the all-baffling brain,
+In it and below it the makings of heroes.
+
+Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in
+	tendon and nerve,
+They shall be stript that you may see them.
+
+Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
+Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby,
+	good-sized arms and legs,
+And wonders within there yet.
+
+Within there runs blood,
+The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
+There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires,
+	reachings, aspirations,
+(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in
+	parlors and lecture-rooms?)
+
+This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be
+	fathers in their turns,
+In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
+Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.
+
+How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
+	through the centuries?
+(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
+	back through the centuries?)
+
+A woman’s body at auction,
+She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
+She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.
+
+Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
+Have you ever loved the body of a man?
+Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations
+	and times all over the earth?
+
+If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
+And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
+And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more
+	beautiful than the most beautiful face.
+
+Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
+	that corrupted her own live body?
+For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.
+
+O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and
+	women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
+I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of
+	the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
+I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
+	that they are my poems,
+Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
+	father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
+Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
+Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
+	sleeping of the lids,
+Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
+Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
+Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
+Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
+	ample side-round of the chest,
+Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
+Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
+	finger-joints, finger-nails,
+Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
+Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
+Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
+	man-balls, man-root,
+Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
+Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
+Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
+All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your
+	body or of any one’s body, male or female,
+The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
+The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
+Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
+Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
+The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
+	love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
+The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
+Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
+Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
+The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
+The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
+The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
+	meat of the body,
+The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
+The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
+	toward the knees,
+The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
+	marrow in the bones,
+The exquisite realization of health;
+O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
+O I say now these are the soul!
+
+
+
+
+A Woman Waits for Me
+
+A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
+Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
+	right man were lacking.
+
+Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
+Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
+Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,
+All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
+	beauties, delights of the earth,
+All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,
+These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.
+
+Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,
+Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
+
+Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
+I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that
+	are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
+I see that they understand me and do not deny me,
+I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of
+	those women.
+
+They are not one jot less than I am,
+They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
+Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
+They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
+	retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
+They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear,
+	well-possess’d of themselves.
+
+I draw you close to me, you women,
+I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
+I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for
+	others’ sakes,
+Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
+They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
+
+It is I, you women, I make my way,
+I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
+I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
+I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I
+	press with slow rude muscle,
+I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
+I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.
+
+Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
+In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
+On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
+The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,
+	new artists, musicians, and singers,
+The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
+I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
+I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
+	inter-penetrate now,
+I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
+	count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
+I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
+	immortality, I plant so lovingly now.
+
+
+
+
+Spontaneous Me
+
+Spontaneous me, Nature,
+The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
+The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
+The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
+The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and
+	light and dark green,
+The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private
+	untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,
+Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after
+	another as I happen to call them to me or think of them,
+The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
+The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
+This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all
+	men carry,
+(Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are
+	our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
+Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers,
+	and the climbing sap,
+Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts
+	of love, bellies press’d and glued together with love,
+Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,
+The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body of the
+	man, the body of the earth,
+Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
+The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that gripes the
+	full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes
+	his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is
+	satisfied;
+The wet of woods through the early hours,
+Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with
+	an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other,
+The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
+The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what
+	he was dreaming,
+The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and
+	content to the ground,
+The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
+The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any
+	one,
+The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged
+	feelers may be intimate where they are,
+The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful
+	withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and
+	edge themselves,
+The limpid liquid within the young man,
+The vex’d corrosion so pensive and so painful,
+The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
+The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,
+The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that
+	flushes and flushes,
+The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to
+	repress what would master him,
+The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
+The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers,
+	the young man all color’d, red, ashamed, angry;
+The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
+The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in the
+	sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,
+The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d
+	long-round walnuts,
+The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
+The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent,
+	while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent,
+The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
+The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh daughters,
+The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate
+	what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through,
+The wholesome relief, repose, content,
+And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself,
+It has done its work--I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.
+
+
+
+
+One Hour to Madness and Joy
+
+One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
+(What is this that frees me so in storms?
+What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
+O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
+O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
+I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
+
+O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
+	in defiance of the world!
+O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
+O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
+	a determin’d man.
+
+O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
+	untied and illumin’d!
+O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
+To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
+	you from yours!
+To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
+To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
+To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.
+
+O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
+To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
+To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
+To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
+To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
+To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
+To be lost if it must be so!
+To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
+With one brief hour of madness and joy.
+
+
+
+
+Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
+
+Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
+Whispering I love you, before long I die,
+I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
+For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
+For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
+
+Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
+Return in peace to the ocean my love,
+I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
+Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
+But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
+As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
+Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the
+	ocean and the land,
+Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.
+
+
+
+
+Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
+
+Ages and ages returning at intervals,
+Undestroy’d, wandering immortal,
+Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,
+I, chanter of Adamic songs,
+Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,
+Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering myself,
+Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,
+Offspring of my loins.
+
+
+
+
+We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
+
+We two, how long we were fool’d,
+Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
+We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
+We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
+We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
+We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
+We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
+We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
+We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings
+	and evenings,
+We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
+We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
+We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic
+	and stellar, we are as two comets,
+We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
+We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
+We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling
+	over each other and interwetting each other,
+We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
+We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence
+	of the globe,
+We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
+We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
+
+
+
+
+O Hymen! O Hymenee!
+
+O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?
+O why sting me for a swift moment only?
+Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
+Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would
+	soon certainly kill me?
+
+
+
+
+I Am He That Aches with Love
+
+I am he that aches with amorous love;
+Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?
+So the body of me to all I meet or know.
+
+
+
+
+Native Moments
+
+Native moments--when you come upon me--ah you are here now,
+Give me now libidinous joys only,
+Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,
+To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,
+I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight
+	orgies of young men,
+I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,
+The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low person
+	for my dearest friend,
+He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by
+	others for deeds done,
+I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?
+O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,
+I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,
+I will be more to you than to any of the rest.
+
+
+
+
+Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City
+
+Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future
+	use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
+Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met
+	there who detain’d me for love of me,
+Day by day and night by night we were together--all else has long
+	been forgotten by me,
+I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,
+Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
+Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
+I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
+
+
+
+
+I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
+
+I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
+	pass’d the church,
+Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-
+	stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,
+I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
+	soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
+Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the
+	wrists around my head,
+Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last
+	night under my ear.
+
+
+
+
+Facing West from California’s Shores
+
+Facing west from California’s shores,
+Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
+I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
+	the land of migrations, look afar,
+Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
+For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
+From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,
+From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,
+Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,
+Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,
+(But where is what I started for so long ago?
+And why is it yet unfound?)
+
+
+
+
+As Adam Early in the Morning
+
+As Adam early in the morning,
+Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,
+Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,
+Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
+Be not afraid of my body.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In Paths Untrodden
+
+In paths untrodden,
+In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
+Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
+From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures,
+	profits, conformities,
+Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,
+Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d, clear to me that my soul,
+That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,
+Here by myself away from the clank of the world,
+Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,
+No longer abash’d, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I
+	would not dare elsewhere,)
+Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains
+	all the rest,
+Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,
+Projecting them along that substantial life,
+Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
+Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,
+I proceed for all who are or have been young men,
+To tell the secret my nights and days,
+To celebrate the need of comrades.
+
+
+
+
+Scented Herbage of My Breast
+
+Scented herbage of my breast,
+Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards,
+Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,
+Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you
+	delicate leaves,
+Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you
+	shall emerge again;
+O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or inhale
+	your faint odor, but I believe a few will;
+O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell in
+	your own way of the heart that is under you,
+O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves, you are
+	not happiness,
+You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting me,
+Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make me
+	think of death,
+Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful
+	except death and love?)
+O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers,
+	I think it must be for death,
+For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,
+Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,
+(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)
+Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as
+	you mean,
+Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my breast!
+Spring away from the conceal’d heart there!
+Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves!
+Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!
+Come I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have
+	long enough stifled and choked;
+Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me not,
+I will say what I have to say by itself,
+I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a
+	call only their call,
+I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States,
+I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will
+	through the States,
+Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating,
+Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it,
+Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above all, and
+	are folded inseparably together, you love and death are,
+Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life,
+For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential,
+That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that
+	they are mainly for you,
+That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,
+That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long,
+That you will one day perhaps take control of all,
+That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,
+That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long,
+But you will last very long.
+
+
+
+
+Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
+
+Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
+Without one thing all will be useless,
+I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
+I am not what you supposed, but far different.
+
+Who is he that would become my follower?
+Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
+
+The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
+You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
+	sole and exclusive standard,
+Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
+The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
+	around you would have to be abandon’d,
+Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
+	go your hand from my shoulders,
+Put me down and depart on your way.
+
+Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
+Or back of a rock in the open air,
+(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
+And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
+But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
+	person for miles around approach unawares,
+Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
+	some quiet island,
+Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
+With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,
+For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
+
+Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
+Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
+Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
+For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
+And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
+
+But these leaves conning you con at peril,
+For these leaves and me you will not understand,
+They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
+	certainly elude you.
+Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
+Already you see I have escaped from you.
+
+For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
+Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
+Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
+Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)
+	prove victorious,
+Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,
+	perhaps more,
+For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times
+	and not hit, that which I hinted at;
+Therefore release me and depart on your way.
+
+
+
+
+For You, O Democracy
+
+Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
+I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
+I will make divine magnetic lands,
+	With the love of comrades,
+	With the life-long love of comrades.
+
+I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
+	and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
+I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
+	By the love of comrades,
+	By the manly love of comrades.
+
+For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
+For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
+
+
+
+
+These I Singing in Spring
+
+These I singing in spring collect for lovers,
+(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?
+And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
+Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,
+Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
+Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there,
+	pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,
+(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and
+	partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)
+Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I
+	think where I go,
+Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
+Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,
+Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
+They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a
+	great crowd, and I in the middle,
+Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,
+Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,
+Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
+Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in
+	Florida as it hung trailing down,
+Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
+And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
+(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again
+	never to separate from me,
+And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this
+	calamus-root shall,
+Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)
+And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,
+And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
+These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
+Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
+Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each;
+But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
+I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable
+	of loving.
+
+
+
+
+Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only
+
+Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,
+Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,
+Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,
+Not in many an oath and promise broken,
+Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,
+Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,
+Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,
+Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease,
+Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,
+Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in
+	the wilds,
+Not in husky pantings through clinch’d teeth,
+Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,
+Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
+Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,
+Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you
+	continually--not there,
+Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
+Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.
+
+
+
+
+Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
+
+Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
+Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
+That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
+That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
+May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,
+	shining and flowing waters,
+The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these
+	are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real
+	something has yet to be known,
+(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
+How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)
+May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem)
+	as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they
+	would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely
+	changed points of view;
+To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d by my
+	lovers, my dear friends,
+When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me
+	by the hand,
+When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason
+	hold not, surround us and pervade us,
+Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I
+	require nothing further,
+I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity
+	beyond the grave,
+But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
+He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
+
+
+
+
+The Base of All Metaphysics
+
+And now gentlemen,
+A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,
+As base and finale too for all metaphysics.
+
+(So to the students the old professor,
+At the close of his crowded course.)
+
+Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,
+Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,
+Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,
+And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having
+	studied long,
+I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,
+See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,
+Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,
+The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,
+Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,
+Of city for city and land for land.
+
+
+
+
+Recorders Ages Hence
+
+Recorders ages hence,
+Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I
+	will tell you what to say of me,
+Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
+The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
+Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love
+	within him, and freely pour’d it forth,
+Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
+Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and
+	dissatisfied at night,
+Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might
+	secretly be indifferent to him,
+Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills,
+	he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,
+Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder
+	of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.
+
+
+
+
+When I Heard at the Close of the Day
+
+When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d
+	with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for
+	me that follow’d,
+And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still
+	I was not happy,
+But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
+	refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
+When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the
+	morning light,
+When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
+	laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
+And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
+	coming, O then I was happy,
+O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
+	nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
+And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came
+	my friend,
+And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
+	continually up the shores,
+I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me
+	whispering to congratulate me,
+For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in
+	the cool night,
+In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
+And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy.
+
+
+
+
+Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
+
+Are you the new person drawn toward me?
+To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
+Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
+Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
+Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
+Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
+Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant
+	manner of me?
+Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
+Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?
+
+
+
+
+Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
+
+Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
+Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side,
+Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter
+	than vines,
+Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the
+	sun is risen,
+Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living
+	sea, to you O sailors!
+Frost-mellow’d berries and Third-month twigs offer’d fresh to young
+	persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
+Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,
+Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
+If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bring
+	form, color, perfume, to you,
+If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,
+	fruits, tall branches and trees.
+
+
+
+
+Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
+
+Not heat flames up and consumes,
+Not sea-waves hurry in and out,
+Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightly
+	along white down-balls of myriads of seeds,
+Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;
+Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consuming,
+	burning for his love whom I love,
+O none more than I hurrying in and out;
+Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O I the same,
+O nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting clouds,
+	are borne through the open air,
+Any more than my soul is borne through the open air,
+Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you.
+
+
+
+
+Trickle Drops
+
+Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving!
+O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,
+Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,
+From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d,
+From my face, from my forehead and lips,
+From my breast, from within where I was conceal’d, press forth red
+	drops, confession drops,
+Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops,
+Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten,
+Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,
+Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,
+Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.
+
+
+
+
+City of Orgies
+
+City of orgies, walks and joys,
+City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make
+Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your
+	spectacles, repay me,
+Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,
+Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with
+	goods in them,
+Nor to converse with learn’d persons, or bear my share in the soiree
+	or feast;
+Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash
+	of eyes offering me love,
+Offering response to my own--these repay me,
+Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.
+
+
+
+
+Behold This Swarthy Face
+
+Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,
+This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,
+My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;
+Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightly
+	on the lips with robust love,
+And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck give a
+	kiss in return,
+We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,
+We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.
+
+
+
+
+I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
+
+I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
+All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
+Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green,
+And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
+But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there
+	without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
+And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it and
+	twined around it a little moss,
+And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
+It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
+(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
+Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
+For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
+	solitary in a wide in a wide flat space,
+Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
+I know very well I could not.
+
+
+
+
+To a Stranger
+
+Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
+You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
+	as of a dream,)
+I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
+All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
+	chaste, matured,
+You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
+I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours
+	only nor left my body mine only,
+You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you
+	take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
+I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
+	wake at night alone,
+I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
+I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
+
+
+
+
+This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
+
+This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone,
+It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful,
+It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy,
+	France, Spain,
+Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or talking other dialects,
+And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become
+	attached to them as I do to men in my own lands,
+O I know we should be brethren and lovers,
+I know I should be happy with them.
+
+
+
+
+I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
+
+I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
+But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
+(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the
+	destruction of them?)
+Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these
+	States inland and seaboard,
+And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large
+	that dents the water,
+Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
+The institution of the dear love of comrades.
+
+
+
+
+The Prairie-Grass Dividing
+
+The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,
+I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
+Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
+Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
+Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
+Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and
+	command, leading not following,
+Those with a never-quell’d audacity, those with sweet and lusty
+	flesh clear of taint,
+Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors,
+	as to say Who are you?
+Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain’d, never obedient,
+Those of inland America.
+
+
+
+
+When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame
+
+When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes and the victories of
+	mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,
+Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house,
+But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
+How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long
+	and long,
+Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how
+	affectionate and faithful they were,
+Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away fill’d with the bitterest envy.
+
+
+
+
+We Two Boys Together Clinging
+
+We two boys together clinging,
+One the other never leaving,
+Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
+Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
+Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
+No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
+	threatening,
+Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
+	the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
+Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
+Fulfilling our foray.
+
+
+
+
+A Promise to California
+
+A promise to California,
+Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon;
+Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,
+	to teach robust American love,
+For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,
+	inland, and along the Western sea;
+For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I will also.
+
+
+
+
+Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
+
+Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,
+Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,
+And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.
+
+
+
+
+No Labor-Saving Machine
+
+No labor-saving machine,
+Nor discovery have I made,
+Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found
+	hospital or library,
+Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,
+Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf,
+But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,
+For comrades and lovers.
+
+
+
+
+A Glimpse
+
+A glimpse through an interstice caught,
+Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove
+	late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
+Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and
+	seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
+A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
+	oath and smutty jest,
+There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
+	perhaps not a word.
+
+
+
+
+A Leaf for Hand in Hand
+
+A leaf for hand in hand;
+You natural persons old and young!
+You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of
+	the Mississippi!
+You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!
+You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!
+I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to
+	walk hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+Earth, My Likeness
+
+Earth, my likeness,
+Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
+I now suspect that is not all;
+I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,
+For an athlete is enamour’d of me, and I of him,
+But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible
+	to burst forth,
+I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.
+
+
+
+
+I Dream’d in a Dream
+
+I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
+	whole of the rest of the earth,
+I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,
+Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
+It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
+And in all their looks and words.
+
+
+
+
+What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
+
+What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
+The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the
+	offing to-day under full sail?
+The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that
+	envelops me?
+Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? --no;
+But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the midst
+	of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,
+The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately kiss’d him,
+While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+To the East and to the West
+
+To the East and to the West,
+To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,
+To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,
+These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,
+I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb
+	friendship, exalte, previously unknown,
+Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.
+
+
+
+
+Sometimes with One I Love
+
+Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
+	unreturn’d love,
+But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one
+	way or another,
+(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
+Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
+
+
+
+
+To a Western Boy
+
+Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;
+Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,
+If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers,
+Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?
+
+
+
+
+Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!
+
+Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!
+O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
+Then separate, as disembodied or another born,
+Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
+I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,
+O sharer of my roving life.
+
+
+
+
+Among the Multitude
+
+Among the men and women the multitude,
+I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
+Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
+	any nearer than I am,
+Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.
+
+Ah lover and perfect equal,
+I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
+And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.
+
+
+
+
+O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
+
+O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,
+As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
+Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is
+	playing within me.
+
+
+
+
+That Shadow My Likeness
+
+That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,
+	chattering, chaffering,
+How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,
+How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
+But among my lovers and caroling these songs,
+O I never doubt whether that is really me.
+
+
+
+
+Full of Life Now
+
+Full of life now, compact, visible,
+I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
+To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
+To you yet unborn these, seeking you.
+
+When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
+Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
+Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
+Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Salut au Monde!
+
+O take my hand Walt Whitman!
+Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
+Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next,
+Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
+
+What widens within you Walt Whitman?
+What waves and soils exuding?
+What climes? what persons and cities are here?
+Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?
+Who are the girls? who are the married women?
+Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about
+	each other’s necks?
+What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
+What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?
+What myriads of dwellings are they fill’d with dwellers?
+
+Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,
+Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west,
+Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
+Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,
+Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it
+	does not set for months,
+Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above
+	the horizon and sinks again,
+Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,
+Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
+
+What do you hear Walt Whitman?
+
+I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing,
+I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early
+	in the day,
+I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,
+I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to
+	the rebeck and guitar,
+I hear continual echoes from the Thames,
+I hear fierce French liberty songs,
+I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,
+I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with
+	the showers of their terrible clouds,
+I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the
+	breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,
+I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,
+I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,
+I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear
+	the responsive base and soprano,
+I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor’s voice putting to sea
+	at Okotsk,
+I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the
+	husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten’d together
+	with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,
+I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,
+I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of
+	the Romans,
+I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful
+	God the Christ,
+I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,
+	adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three
+	thousand years ago.
+
+What do you see Walt Whitman?
+Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?
+I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
+I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,
+	palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface,
+I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,
+	and the sunlit part on the other side,
+I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,
+I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as
+	my land is to me.
+
+I see plenteous waters,
+I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,
+I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,
+I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,
+I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,
+I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the
+	Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,
+I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the Red
+	mountains of Madagascar,
+I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,
+I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,
+I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and
+	Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
+The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of Guinea,
+The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki land-lock’d in its
+	mountains,
+The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and
+	the bay of Biscay,
+The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,
+The White sea, and the sea around Greenland.
+
+I behold the mariners of the world,
+Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the lookout,
+Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.
+
+I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in
+	port, some on their voyages,
+Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes
+	Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,
+Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape
+	Lopatka, others Behring’s straits,
+Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba or
+	Hayti, others Hudson’s bay or Baffin’s bay,
+Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the
+	firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land’s End,
+Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
+Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
+Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,
+Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
+Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter
+	and Cambodia,
+Others wait steam’d up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
+Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
+Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
+Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.
+
+I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,
+I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,
+I see them in Asia and in Africa.
+
+I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,
+I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,
+	passions, of my race.
+
+I see the long river-stripes of the earth,
+I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,
+I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River,
+	the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl,
+I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the
+	Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,
+I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,
+I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po,
+I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.
+
+I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and
+	that of India,
+I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
+
+I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in
+	human forms,
+I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles,
+	sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,
+I see where druids walk’d the groves of Mona, I see the mistletoe
+	and vervain,
+I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods, I see the old
+	signifiers.
+
+I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of
+	youths and old persons,
+I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil’d
+	faithfully and long and then died,
+I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the
+	beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb’d Bacchus,
+I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on
+	his head,
+I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov’d, saying to the people
+	Do not weep for me,
+This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d from my true
+	country, I now go back there,
+I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.
+
+I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and
+	blossoms and corn,
+I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.
+
+I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown
+	events, heroes, records of the earth.
+
+I see the places of the sagas,
+I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,
+I see granite bowlders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,
+I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,
+I see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless oceans,
+	that the dead men’s spirits when they wearied of their quiet
+	graves might rise up through the mounds and gaze on the tossing
+	billows, and be refresh’d by storms, immensity, liberty, action.
+
+I see the steppes of Asia,
+I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs,
+I see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,
+I see the table-lands notch’d with ravines, I see the jungles and deserts,
+I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tail’d sheep,
+	the antelope, and the burrowing wolf
+
+I see the highlands of Abyssinia,
+I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,
+And see fields of teff-wheat and places of verdure and gold.
+
+I see the Brazilian vaquero,
+I see the Bolivian ascending mount Sorata,
+I see the Wacho crossing the plains, I see the incomparable rider of
+	horses with his lasso on his arm,
+I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.
+
+I see the regions of snow and ice,
+I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,
+I see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance,
+I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs,
+I see the porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the south
+	Pacific and the north Atlantic,
+I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland--I
+	mark the long winters and the isolation.
+
+I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them,
+I am a real Parisian,
+I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople,
+I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
+I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
+I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne,
+	Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence,
+I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw, or northward in Christiania or
+	Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in some street in Iceland,
+I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
+
+I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,
+I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison’d splint, the
+	fetich, and the obi.
+I see African and Asiatic towns,
+I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia,
+I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Tokio,
+I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts,
+I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,
+I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva and those of Herat,
+I see Teheran, I see Muscat and Medina and the intervening sands,
+	see the caravans toiling onward,
+I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks.
+I look on chisell’d histories, records of conquering kings,
+	dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks,
+I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm’d,
+	swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,
+I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the
+	side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.
+
+I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,
+I see all the prisoners in the prisons,
+I see the defective human bodies of the earth,
+The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,
+The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,
+The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
+
+I see male and female everywhere,
+I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,
+I see the constructiveness of my race,
+I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,
+I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, I go among them, I
+	mix indiscriminately,
+And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
+
+You whoever you are!
+You daughter or son of England!
+You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
+You dim-descended, black, divine-soul’d African, large, fine-headed,
+	nobly-form’d, superbly destin’d, on equal terms with me!
+You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
+You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
+You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
+You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock whence I
+	myself have descended;)
+You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
+You neighbor of the Danube!
+You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!
+You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
+You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!
+You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
+You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
+You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
+You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting
+	arrows to the mark!
+You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
+You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
+You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once
+	on Syrian ground!
+You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
+You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates!
+	you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending mount Ararat!
+You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets
+	of Mecca!
+You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb ruling your
+	families and tribes!
+You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus,
+	or lake Tiberias!
+You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
+You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!
+All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent
+	of place!
+All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
+And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!
+And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!
+Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!
+
+Each of us inevitable,
+Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
+Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
+Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
+
+You Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair’d hordes!
+You own’d persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
+You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
+You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon for all
+	your glimmering language and spirituality!
+You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!
+You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
+	groveling, seeking your food!
+You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
+You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d Bedowee!
+You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
+You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Feejeeman!
+I do not prefer others so very much before you either,
+I do not say one word against you, away back there where you stand,
+(You will come forward in due time to my side.)
+
+My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth,
+I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in
+	all lands,
+I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away to distant
+	continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
+I think I have blown with you you winds;
+You waters I have finger’d every shore with you,
+I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through,
+I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas and on the high
+	embedded rocks, to cry thence:
+
+What cities the light or warmth penetrates I penetrate those cities myself,
+All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
+
+Toward you all, in America’s name,
+I raise high the perpendicular hand, I make the signal,
+To remain after me in sight forever,
+For all the haunts and homes of men.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Open Road
+
+Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
+Healthy, free, the world before me,
+The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
+
+Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
+Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
+Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
+Strong and content I travel the open road.
+
+The earth, that is sufficient,
+I do not want the constellations any nearer,
+I know they are very well where they are,
+I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
+
+(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
+I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
+I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
+I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
+
+You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
+	that is here,
+I believe that much unseen is also here.
+
+Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
+The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the
+	illiterate person, are not denied;
+The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the
+	drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
+The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
+The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the
+	town, the return back from the town,
+They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
+None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
+
+You air that serves me with breath to speak!
+You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
+You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
+You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
+I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.
+
+You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
+You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined
+	side! you distant ships!
+You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d facades! you roofs!
+You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
+You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
+You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
+You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
+From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to
+	yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
+From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces,
+	and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
+
+The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
+The picture alive, every part in its best light,
+The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
+	not wanted,
+The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
+
+O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
+Do you say Venture not--if you leave me you are lost?
+Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
+	adhere to me?
+
+O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
+You express me better than I can express myself,
+You shall be more to me than my poem.
+
+I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all
+	free poems also,
+I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
+I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
+	beholds me shall like me,
+I think whoever I see must be happy.
+
+From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
+Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
+Listening to others, considering well what they say,
+Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
+Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
+	would hold me.
+
+I inhale great draughts of space,
+The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
+
+I am larger, better than I thought,
+I did not know I held so much goodness.
+
+All seems beautiful to me,
+can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me
+	I would do the same to you,
+I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
+I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
+I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
+Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
+Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
+
+Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
+Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not
+	astonish me.
+
+Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
+It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
+
+Here a great personal deed has room,
+(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
+Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
+	authority and all argument against it.)
+
+Here is the test of wisdom,
+Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
+Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
+Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
+Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
+Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
+	excellence of things;
+Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
+	it out of the soul.
+
+Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
+They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the
+	spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.
+
+Here is realization,
+Here is a man tallied--he realizes here what he has in him,
+The past, the future, majesty, love--if they are vacant of you, you
+	are vacant of them.
+
+Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
+Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
+Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
+
+Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
+Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
+Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
+
+Here is the efflux of the soul,
+The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates,
+	ever provoking questions,
+These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
+Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight
+	expands my blood?
+Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
+Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
+	thoughts descend upon me?
+(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always
+	drop fruit as I pass;)
+What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
+What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
+What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by
+	and pause?
+What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what
+	gives them to be free to mine?
+
+The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
+I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
+Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
+
+Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
+The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of
+	man and woman,
+(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day
+	out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet
+	continually out of itself.)
+
+Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
+	love of young and old,
+From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
+Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
+
+Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
+Traveling with me you find what never tires.
+
+The earth never tires,
+The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude
+	and incomprehensible at first,
+Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
+I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
+
+Allons! we must not stop here,
+However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
+	we cannot remain here,
+However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must
+	not anchor here,
+However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted
+	to receive it but a little while.
+
+Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
+We will sail pathless and wild seas,
+We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
+	speeds by under full sail.
+
+Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
+Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
+Allons! from all formules!
+From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
+
+The stale cadaver blocks up the passage--the burial waits no longer.
+
+Allons! yet take warning!
+He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
+None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
+Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
+Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
+No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.
+
+(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
+We convince by our presence.)
+
+Listen! I will be honest with you,
+I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
+These are the days that must happen to you:
+You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
+You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
+You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly
+	settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an
+	irresistible call to depart,
+You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
+	who remain behind you,
+What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
+	passionate kisses of parting,
+You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands
+	toward you.
+
+Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
+They too are on the road--they are the swift and majestic men--they
+	are the greatest women,
+Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
+Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
+Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,
+Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
+Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
+Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of
+	children, bearers of children,
+Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
+Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
+	years each emerging from that which preceded it,
+Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
+Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
+Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded
+	and well-grain’d manhood,
+Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
+Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
+Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
+Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
+
+Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
+To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
+To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
+	they tend to,
+Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
+To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
+To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
+To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you,
+	however long but it stretches and waits for you,
+To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
+To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
+	labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one
+	particle of it,
+To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant
+	villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and
+	the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
+To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
+To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
+To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
+	them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
+To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
+	them behind you,
+To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
+	traveling souls.
+
+All parts away for the progress of souls,
+All religion, all solid things, arts, governments--all that was or is
+	apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners
+	before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
+
+Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of
+	the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
+
+Forever alive, forever forward,
+Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
+	dissatisfied,
+Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
+They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
+But I know that they go toward the best--toward something great.
+
+Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
+You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
+	you built it, or though it has been built for you.
+
+Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
+It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
+
+Behold through you as bad as the rest,
+Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
+Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
+Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
+
+No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
+Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
+Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and
+	bland in the parlors,
+In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
+Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom,
+	everywhere,
+Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
+	breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
+Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
+Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
+Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.
+
+Allons! through struggles and wars!
+The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
+
+Have the past struggles succeeded?
+What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
+Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
+	from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
+	something to make a greater struggle necessary.
+
+My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
+He going with me must go well arm’d,
+He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies,
+	desertions.
+
+Allons! the road is before us!
+It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet have tried it well--be not
+	detain’d!
+Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
+	shelf unopen’d!
+Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
+Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
+Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
+	court, and the judge expound the law.
+
+Camerado, I give you my hand!
+I give you my love more precious than money,
+I give you myself before preaching or law;
+Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
+Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
+
+Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
+Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also face
+	to face.
+
+Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
+	you are to me!
+On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
+	home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
+And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
+	to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
+
+The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
+The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every
+	one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
+The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
+The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on
+	the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
+The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
+The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
+The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
+
+Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
+Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
+Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
+	heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
+Others will see the islands large and small;
+Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
+	an hour high,
+A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
+	will see them,
+Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
+	falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
+
+It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,
+I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
+	generations hence,
+Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
+Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
+Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the
+	bright flow, I was refresh’d,
+Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
+	current, I stood yet was hurried,
+Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
+	thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
+
+I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
+Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
+	floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
+Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
+	the rest in strong shadow,
+Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
+Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
+Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
+Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my
+	head in the sunlit water,
+Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
+Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
+Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
+Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
+Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
+The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
+The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
+	serpentine pennants,
+The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,
+The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
+The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
+The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
+	frolic-some crests and glistening,
+The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the
+	granite storehouses by the docks,
+On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on
+	each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
+On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
+	high and glaringly into the night,
+Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
+	light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
+
+These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
+I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
+The men and women I saw were all near to me,
+Others the same--others who look back on me because I look’d forward
+	to them,
+(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)
+
+What is it then between us?
+What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
+
+Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails not,
+I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
+I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
+	waters around it,
+I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
+In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
+In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
+I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
+I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
+That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I
+	should be of my body.
+
+It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
+The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
+The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
+My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
+Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
+I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
+I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
+Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
+Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
+Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
+The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
+The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
+
+Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
+Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
+Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as
+	they saw me approaching or passing,
+Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of
+	their flesh against me as I sat,
+Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
+	never told them a word,
+Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
+Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
+The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
+Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
+
+Closer yet I approach you,
+What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in my
+	stores in advance,
+I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
+
+Who was to know what should come home to me?
+Who knows but I am enjoying this?
+Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you
+	now, for all you cannot see me?
+
+Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
+	mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
+River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
+The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
+	twilight, and the belated lighter?
+What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I
+	love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as approach?
+What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
+	looks in my face?
+Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
+
+We understand then do we not?
+What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
+What the study could not teach--what the preaching could not
+	accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?
+
+Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
+Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
+Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the
+	men and women generations after me!
+Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
+Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
+Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
+Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
+Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
+Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
+	nighest name!
+Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
+Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
+	makes it!
+Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
+	looking upon you;
+Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
+	haste with the hasting current;
+Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
+Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
+	downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
+Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any
+	one’s head, in the sunlit water!
+Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d
+	schooners, sloops, lighters!
+Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
+Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
+	nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
+Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
+You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
+About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,
+Thrive, cities--bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
+	sufficient rivers,
+Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
+Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
+
+You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
+We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
+Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
+We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within us,
+We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also,
+You furnish your parts toward eternity,
+Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Answerer
+
+Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer,
+To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me.
+
+A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,
+How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
+Tell him to send me the signs. And I stand before the young man
+	face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and his
+	left hand in my right hand,
+And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for him that
+	answers for all, and send these signs.
+
+Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final,
+Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light,
+Him they immerse and he immerses them.
+
+Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape,
+	people, animals,
+The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so
+	tell I my morning’s romanza,)
+All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy,
+The best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably reaps,
+The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and he
+	domiciles there,
+Nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for him,
+	the ships in the offing,
+The perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they are for anybody.
+
+He puts things in their attitudes,
+He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,
+He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and
+	sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest
+	never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.
+
+He is the Answerer,
+What can be answer’d he answers, and what cannot be answer’d he
+	shows how it cannot be answer’d.
+
+A man is a summons and challenge,
+(It is vain to skulk--do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you
+	hear the ironical echoes?)
+
+Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride,
+	beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,
+He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and
+	down also.
+
+Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly
+	and gently and safely by day or by night,
+He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of
+	hands on the knobs.
+
+His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or
+	universal than he is,
+The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.
+
+Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,
+He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and
+	any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
+One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees
+	how they join.
+
+He says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President
+	at his levee,
+And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
+And both understand him and know that his speech is right.
+
+He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,
+He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another,
+	Here is our equal appearing and new.
+
+Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
+And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that
+	he has follow’d the sea,
+And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
+And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
+No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has
+	follow’d it,
+No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and
+	sisters there.
+
+The English believe he comes of their English stock,
+A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near,
+	removed from none.
+
+Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him,
+The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, the Spaniard
+	is sure, and the island Cuban is sure,
+The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi
+	or St. Lawrence or Sacramento, or Hudson or Paumanok sound, claims him.
+
+The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
+The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
+	themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
+They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so grown.
+
+The indications and tally of time,
+Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs,
+Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts,
+What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company
+	of singers, and their words,
+The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark,
+	but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark,
+The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
+His insight and power encircle things and the human race,
+He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race.
+
+The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
+The singers are welcom’d, understood, appear often enough, but rare
+	has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker
+	of poems, the Answerer,
+(Not every century nor every five centuries has contain’d such a
+	day, for all its names.)
+
+The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible
+	names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,
+The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer,
+	sweet-singer, night-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer,
+	weird-singer, or something else.
+
+All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
+The words of true poems do not merely please,
+The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty;
+The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers
+	and fathers,
+The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
+
+Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health,
+	rudeness of body, withdrawnness,
+Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems.
+
+The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
+The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
+	these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
+
+The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
+They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
+	peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else,
+They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
+They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
+Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing,
+	fain, love-sick.
+
+They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
+They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full,
+Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
+	learn one of the meanings,
+To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless
+	rings and never be quiet again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Our Old Feuillage
+
+Always our old feuillage!
+Always Florida’s green peninsula--always the priceless delta of
+	Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,
+Always California’s golden hills and hollows, and the silver
+	mountains of New Mexico--always soft-breath’d Cuba,
+Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern sea, inseparable with
+	the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western seas,
+The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and a half
+	millions of square miles,
+The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main,
+	the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
+The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of dwellings--
+	always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches,
+Always the free range and diversity--always the continent of Democracy;
+Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers,
+	Kanada, the snows;
+Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing
+	the huge oval lakes;
+Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing density there,
+	the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
+All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
+All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
+Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering,
+On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats
+	wooding up,
+Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys
+	of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke
+	and Delaware,
+In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the
+	hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink,
+In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the
+	water rocking silently,
+In farmers’ barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done, they
+	rest standing, they are too tired,
+Afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around,
+The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d, the farthest polar
+	sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes,
+White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,
+On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together,
+In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the
+	wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk,
+In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer
+	visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming,
+In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black
+	buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops,
+Below, the red cedar festoon’d with tylandria, the pines and
+	cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat,
+Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites with
+	color’d flowers and berries enveloping huge trees,
+The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,
+	noiselessly waved by the wind,
+The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and
+	the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
+Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding
+	from troughs,
+The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees,
+	the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising;
+Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North
+	Carolina’s coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the
+	large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work’d by horses, the
+	clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
+Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the
+	incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,
+There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all
+	directions is cover’d with pine straw;
+In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge,
+	by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking,
+In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence,
+	joyfully welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse,
+On rivers boatmen safely moor’d at nightfall in their boats under
+	shelter of high banks,
+Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle,
+	others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking;
+Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing
+	in the Great Dismal Swamp,
+There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous
+	moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;
+Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an
+	excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all
+	bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
+Children at play, or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep,
+	(how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!)
+The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the
+	Mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;
+California life, the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume,
+	the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the graves one
+	in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;
+Down in Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving
+	mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks
+	and wharves;
+Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American Soul, with
+	equal hemispheres, one Love, one Dilation or Pride;
+In arriere the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines, the
+	calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,
+The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward
+	the earth,
+The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural
+	exclamations,
+The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
+The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter
+	of enemies;
+All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,
+	reminiscences, institutions,
+All these States compact, every square mile of these States without
+	excepting a particle;
+Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields,
+Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies
+	shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air,
+The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler
+	southward but returning northward early in the spring,
+The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows and
+	shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside,
+The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New
+	Orleans, San Francisco,
+The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
+Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,
+The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the
+	swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre
+	of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift
+	shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is;
+The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners,
+Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the
+	individuality of the States, each for itself--the moneymakers,
+Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,
+	pulley, all certainties,
+The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
+In space the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars--on the firm
+	earth, the lands, my lands,
+O lands! all so dear to me--what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it
+	at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is,
+Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the
+	myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,
+Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande,
+	the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the
+	Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing
+	and skipping and running,
+Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with
+	parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and
+	aquatic plants,
+Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing
+	the crow with its bill, for amusement--and I triumphantly twittering,
+The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
+	themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside
+	move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time
+	reliev’d by other sentinels--and I feeding and taking turns
+	with the rest,
+In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters,
+	rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his
+	fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives--and I, plunging at the
+	hunters, corner’d and desperate,
+In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the
+	countless workmen working in the shops,
+And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and no less in myself
+	than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
+Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more
+	inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand
+	diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands
+	are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY;
+Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,
+Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil--these me,
+These affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me
+	and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union
+	of them, to afford the like to you?
+Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you
+	also be eligible as I am?
+How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect
+	bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Song of Joys
+
+O to make the most jubilant song!
+Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
+Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.
+
+O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
+O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
+O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!
+
+O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!
+It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
+I will have thousands of globes and all time.
+
+O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive!
+To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
+	laughing locomotive!
+To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
+
+O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
+The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh
+	stillness of the woods,
+The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.
+
+O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
+The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool
+	gurgling by the ears and hair.
+
+O the fireman’s joys!
+I hear the alarm at dead of night,
+I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
+The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
+
+O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena in
+	perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
+
+O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is
+	capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
+
+O the mother’s joys!
+The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the
+	patiently yielded life.
+
+O the of increase, growth, recuperation,
+The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.
+
+O to go back to the place where I was born,
+To hear the birds sing once more,
+To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,
+And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
+
+O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,
+To continue and be employ’d there all my life,
+The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water,
+The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
+I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear,
+Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
+I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man;
+In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot
+	on the ice--I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
+Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon,
+	my brood of tough boys accompanying me,
+My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no
+	one else so well as they love to be with me,
+By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.
+
+Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots
+	where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys,)
+O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row
+	just before sunrise toward the buoys,
+I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
+	desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert
+	wooden pegs in the ’oints of their pincers,
+
+I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore,
+There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil’d
+	till their color becomes scarlet.
+
+Another time mackerel-taking,
+Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the
+	water for miles;
+Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
+	brown-faced crew;
+Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body,
+My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the
+	coils of slender rope,
+In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
+	companions.
+
+O boating on the rivers,
+The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers,
+The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft
+	and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
+The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook
+	supper at evening.
+
+(O something pernicious and dread!
+Something far away from a puny and pious life!
+Something unproved! something in a trance!
+Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)
+
+O to work in mines, or forging iron,
+Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample
+	and shadow’d space,
+The furnace, the hot liquid pour’d out and running.
+
+O to resume the joys of the soldier!
+To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer--to feel his sympathy!
+To behold his calmness--to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
+To go to battle--to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
+To hear the crash of artillery--to see the glittering of the bayonets
+	and musket-barrels in the sun!
+
+To see men fall and die and not complain!
+To taste the savage taste of blood--to be so devilish!
+To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
+
+O the whaleman’s joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
+I feel the ship’s motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me,
+I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There--she blows!
+Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest--we descend,
+	wild with excitement,
+I leap in the lower’d boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
+We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass,
+	lethargic, basking,
+I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
+	vigorous arm;
+O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling,
+	running to windward, tows me,
+Again I see him rise to breathe, we row close again,
+I see a lance driven through his side, press’d deep, turn’d in the wound,
+Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
+As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and
+	narrower, swiftly cutting the water--I see him die,
+He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then
+	falls flat and still in the bloody foam.
+
+O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
+My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
+My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
+
+O ripen’d joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
+I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
+How clear is my mind--how all people draw nigh to me!
+What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more
+	than the bloom of youth?
+What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?
+
+O the orator’s joys!
+To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
+	ribs and throat,
+To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
+To lead America--to quell America with a great tongue.
+
+O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself, receiving identity through
+	materials and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them,
+My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch,
+	reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
+The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
+My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,
+Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes
+	which finally see,
+Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
+	embraces, procreates.
+
+O the farmer’s joys!
+Ohioan’s, Illinoisian’s, Wisconsinese’, Kanadian’s, Iowan’s,
+	Kansian’s, Missourian’s, Oregonese’ joys!
+To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
+To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
+To plough land in the spring for maize,
+To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.
+
+O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
+To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.
+
+O to realize space!
+The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
+To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying
+	clouds, as one with them.
+
+O the joy a manly self-hood!
+To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,
+To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
+To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
+To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
+To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.
+
+Knowist thou the excellent joys of youth?
+Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face?
+Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath’d games?
+Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
+Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse and drinking?
+
+Yet O my soul supreme!
+Knowist thou the joys of pensive thought?
+Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
+Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow’d yet proud, the suffering
+	and the struggle?
+The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day
+	or night?
+Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space?
+Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals, the divine wife,
+	the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
+Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.
+
+O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
+To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
+No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
+To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving
+	my interior soul impregnable,
+And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
+
+For not life’s joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death!
+The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
+	for reasons,
+Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn’d, or render’d
+	to powder, or buried,
+My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
+My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
+	further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
+
+O to attract by more than attraction!
+How it is I know not--yet behold! the something which obeys none
+	of the rest,
+It is offensive, never defensive--yet how magnetic it draws.
+
+O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
+To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
+To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
+To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with
+	perfect nonchalance!
+To be indeed a God!
+
+O to sail to sea in a ship!
+To leave this steady unendurable land,
+To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the
+	houses,
+To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
+To sail and sail and sail!
+
+O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
+To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
+To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
+A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
+A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Broad-Axe
+
+Weapon shapely, naked, wan,
+Head from the mother’s bowels drawn,
+Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,
+Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,
+Resting the grass amid and upon,
+To be lean’d and to lean on.
+
+Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades,
+	sights and sounds.
+Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,
+Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.
+
+Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind,
+Welcome are lands of pine and oak,
+Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,
+Welcome are lands of gold,
+Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,
+Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,
+Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and
+	sweet potato,
+Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,
+Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,
+Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of
+	orchards, flax, honey, hemp;
+Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,
+Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,
+Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,
+Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,
+Lands of iron--lands of the make of the axe.
+
+The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,
+The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for garden,
+The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull’d,
+The walling and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
+The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends,
+	and the cutting away of masts,
+The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion’d houses and barns,
+The remember’d print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,
+	families, goods,
+The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
+The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset
+	anywhere,
+The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
+The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
+The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
+The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces,
+The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
+The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless
+	impatience of restraint,
+The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the
+	solidification;
+The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and
+	sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,
+Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of
+	snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
+The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural
+	life of the woods, the strong day’s work,
+The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the
+	bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;
+The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
+The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
+The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them
+	regular,
+Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they
+	were prepared,
+The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their
+	curv’d limbs,
+Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by
+	posts and braces,
+The hook’d arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
+The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail’d,
+Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
+The echoes resounding through the vacant building:
+The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,
+The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully
+	bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,
+The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly
+	laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,
+The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the
+	trowels striking the bricks,
+The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place,
+	and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,
+The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the
+	steady replenishing by the hod-men;
+Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,
+The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log shaping it toward
+	the shape of a mast,
+The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,
+The butter-color’d chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,
+The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,
+The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats,
+	stays against the sea;
+The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the
+	close-pack’d square,
+The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
+The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,
+	the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
+The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the
+	hooks and ladders and their execution,
+The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors
+	if the fire smoulders under them,
+The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;
+The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,
+The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
+The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the
+	edge with his thumb,
+The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;
+The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
+The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
+The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
+The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
+The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
+The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
+The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe
+	thither,
+The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty,
+The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce
+	and parley,
+The sack of an old city in its time,
+The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,
+Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
+Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the
+	gripe of brigands,
+Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
+The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
+The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,
+The power of personality just or unjust.
+
+Muscle and pluck forever!
+What invigorates life invigorates death,
+And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
+And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
+For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
+	delicatesse of the earth and of man,
+And nothing endures but personal qualities.
+
+What do you think endures?
+Do you think a great city endures?
+Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the
+	best built steamships?
+Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’œuvres of engineering,
+	forts, armaments?
+
+Away! these are not to be cherish’d for themselves,
+They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
+The show passes, all does well enough of course,
+All does very well till one flash of defiance.
+
+A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
+If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the
+	whole world.
+
+The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d
+	wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
+Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the
+	anchor-lifters of the departing,
+Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops
+	selling goods from the rest of the earth,
+Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where
+	money is plentiest,
+Nor the place of the most numerous population.
+
+Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
+Where the city stands that is belov’d by these, and loves them in
+	return and understands them,
+Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
+Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
+Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
+Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
+Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of
+	elected persons,
+Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of
+	death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
+Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside
+	authority,
+Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,
+	Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
+Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
+	themselves,
+Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
+Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
+Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
+Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
+Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
+Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
+Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
+Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
+There the great city stands.
+
+How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
+How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
+	man’s or woman’s look!
+
+All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;
+A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,
+When he or she appears materials are overaw’d,
+The dispute on the soul stops,
+The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid away.
+
+What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
+What is your respectability now?
+What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?
+Where are your jibes of being now?
+Where are your cavils about the soul now?
+
+A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for
+	all the forbidding appearance,
+There is the mine, there are the miners,
+The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d, the hammersmen
+	are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
+What always served and always serves is at hand.
+
+Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,
+Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek,
+Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
+Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,
+Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose
+	relics remain in Central America,
+Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and
+	the druids,
+Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the
+	snow-cover’d hills of Scandinavia,
+Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough
+	sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves,
+Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral
+	tribes and nomads,
+Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic,
+Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,
+Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the
+	making of those for war,
+Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,
+For the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages,
+Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.
+
+I see the European headsman,
+He stands mask’d, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,
+And leans on a ponderous axe.
+
+(Whom have you slaughter’d lately European headsman?
+Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)
+
+I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
+I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
+Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown’d ladies, impeach’d ministers, rejected kings,
+Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.
+
+I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
+The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
+(Mind you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)
+
+I see the blood wash’d entirely away from the axe,
+Both blade and helve are clean,
+They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp no more
+	the necks of queens.
+
+I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,
+I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,
+
+I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race,
+	the newest, largest race.
+
+(America! I do not vaunt my love for you,
+I have what I have.)
+
+The axe leaps!
+The solid forest gives fluid utterances,
+They tumble forth, they rise and form,
+Hut, tent, landing, survey,
+Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
+Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable,
+Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
+Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,
+Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
+	wedge, rounce,
+Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
+Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
+Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
+Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick,
+Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.
+
+The shapes arise!
+Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that
+	neighbors them,
+Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kenebec,
+Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little
+	lakes, or on the Columbia,
+Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly
+	gatherings, the characters and fun,
+Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by the
+	Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
+Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.
+
+The shapes arise!
+Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,
+Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,
+Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,
+Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,
+Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in
+	many a bay and by-place,
+The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the
+	hackmatack-roots for knees,
+The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
+	workmen busy outside and inside,
+The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,
+	bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.
+
+The shapes arise!
+The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d,
+The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,
+The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of
+	the bride’s bed,
+The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,
+	the shape of the babe’s cradle,
+The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet,
+The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly
+	parents and children,
+The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and
+	woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman,
+The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and joyously
+	eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day’s work.
+
+The shapes arise!
+The shape of the prisoner’s place in the court-room, and of him or
+	her seated in the place,
+The shape of the liquor-bar lean’d against by the young rum-drinker
+	and the old rum-drinker,
+The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot- steps,
+The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple,
+The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings,
+The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
+	murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion’d arms,
+The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d
+	crowd, the dangling of the rope.
+
+The shapes arise!
+Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,
+The door passing the dissever’d friend flush’d and in haste,
+The door that admits good news and bad news,
+The door whence the son left home confident and puff’d up,
+The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence,
+	diseas’d, broken down, without innocence, without means.
+
+Her shape arises,
+She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
+The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d,
+She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal’d from her,
+She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
+She is the best belov’d, it is without exception, she has no reason
+	to fear and she does not fear,
+Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs, smutty expressions, are idle to
+	her as she passes,
+She is silent, she is possess’d of herself, they do not offend her,
+She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,
+She too is a law of Nature--there is no law stronger than she is.
+
+The main shapes arise!
+Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
+Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
+Shapes of turbulent manly cities,
+Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
+Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Exposition
+
+(Ah little recks the laborer,
+How near his work is holding him to God,
+The loving Laborer through space and time.)
+
+After all not to create only, or found only,
+But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,
+To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,
+To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,
+Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,
+To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,
+These also are the lessons of our New World;
+While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!
+
+Long and long has the grass been growing,
+Long and long has the rain been falling,
+Long has the globe been rolling round.
+
+Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
+Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
+That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and AEneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings,
+Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus,
+Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa’s gate and on
+	Mount Moriah,
+The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles,
+	and Italian collections,
+For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
+	awaits, demands you.
+
+Responsive to our summons,
+Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,
+Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
+She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,
+I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance,
+I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
+Upon this very scene.
+
+The dame of dames! can I believe then,
+Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?
+Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old
+	associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
+But that she’s left them all--and here?
+
+Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
+I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
+The same undying soul of earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s
+	expression,
+Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,
+Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s, foundation of to-day’s,
+Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain,
+Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
+	baffling tombs,
+Ended for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors, ended
+	the primitive call of the muses,
+Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
+Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the
+	holy Graal,
+Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
+The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,
+Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
+Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its
+	waters reflected,
+Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
+	Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation;
+Pass’d! pass’d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world,
+	now void, inanimate, phantom world,
+Embroider’d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,
+Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
+	courtly dames,
+Pass’d to its charnel vault, coffin’d with crown and armor on,
+Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page,
+And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme.
+
+I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigre, (having it
+	is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,)
+Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for
+	herself, striding through the confusion,
+By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d,
+Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
+Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,
+She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware!
+
+But hold--don’t I forget my manners?
+To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant
+	for?) to thee Columbia;
+In liberty’s name welcome immortal! clasp hands,
+And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.
+
+Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
+I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,
+And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,
+Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same,
+The same old love, beauty and use the same.
+
+We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves from thee,
+(Would the son separate himself from the father?)
+Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through
+	past ages bending, building,
+We build to ours to-day.
+
+Mightier than Egypt’s tombs,
+Fairer than Grecia’s, Roma’s temples,
+Prouder than Milan’s statued, spired cathedral,
+More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
+We plan even now to raise, beyond them all,
+Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,
+A keep for life for practical invention.
+
+As in a waking vision,
+E’en while I chant I see it rise, I scan and prophesy outside and in,
+Its manifold ensemble.
+
+Around a palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
+Earth’s modern wonder, history’s seven outstripping,
+High rising tier on tier with glass and iron facades,
+Gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfulest hues,
+Bronze, lilac, robin’s-egg, marine and crimson,
+Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner Freedom,
+The banners of the States and flags of every land,
+A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.
+
+Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect human
+	life be started,
+Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.
+
+Not only all the world of works, trade, products,
+But all the workmen of the world here to be represented.
+
+Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
+In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization,
+Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by magic,
+The cotton shall be pick’d almost in the very field,
+Shall be dried, clean’d, ginn’d, baled, spun into thread and cloth
+	before you,
+You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the new ones,
+You shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then
+	bread baked by the bakers,
+You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and
+	on till they become bullion,
+You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a
+	composing-stick is,
+You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,
+	shedding the printed leaves steady and fast,
+The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.
+
+In large calm halls, a stately museum shall teach you the infinite
+	lessons of minerals,
+In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated--in
+	another animals, animal life and development.
+
+One stately house shall be the music house,
+Others for other arts--learning, the sciences, shall all be here,
+None shall be slighted, none but shall here be honor’d, help’d, exampled.
+
+(This, this and these, America, shall be your pyramids and obelisks,
+Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
+Your temple at Olympia.)
+
+The male and female many laboring not,
+Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
+With precious benefits to both, glory to all,
+To thee America, and thee eternal Muse.
+
+And here shall ye inhabit powerful Matrons!
+In your vast state vaster than all the old,
+Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
+To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes,
+Practical, peaceful life, the people’s life, the People themselves,
+Lifted, illumin’d, bathed in peace--elate, secure in peace.
+
+Away with themes of war! away with war itself!
+Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of
+	blacken’d, mutilated corpses!
+That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for
+	lop-tongued wolves, not reasoning men,
+And in its stead speed industry’s campaigns,
+With thy undaunted armies, engineering,
+Thy pennants labor, loosen’d to the breeze,
+Thy bugles sounding loud and clear.
+
+Away with old romance!
+Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts,
+Away with love-verses sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers,
+Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide,
+The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,
+With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.
+
+To you ye reverent sane sisters,
+I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art,
+To exalt the present and the real,
+To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,
+To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled,
+To manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig,
+To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers,
+For every man to see to it that he really do something, for every woman too;
+To use the hammer and the saw, (rip, or cross-cut,)
+To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
+To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
+To invent a little, something ingenious, to aid the washing, cooking,
+	cleaning,
+And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.
+
+I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here,
+All occupations, duties broad and close,
+Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,
+The old, old practical burdens, interests, joys,
+The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,
+The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,
+Food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it,
+Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded man or
+	woman, the perfect longeve personality,
+And helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its soul,
+For the eternal real life to come.
+
+With latest connections, works, the inter-transportation of the world,
+Steam-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum,
+These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic’s delicate cable,
+The Pacific railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis and Gothard and
+	Hoosac tunnels, the Brooklyn bridge,
+This earth all spann’d with iron rails, with lines of steamships
+	threading in every sea,
+Our own rondure, the current globe I bring.
+
+And thou America,
+Thy offspring towering e’er so high, yet higher Thee above all towering,
+With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
+Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
+Thee, ever thee, I sing.
+
+Thou, also thou, a World,
+With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
+Rounded by thee in one--one common orbic language,
+One common indivisible destiny for All.
+
+And by the spells which ye vouchsafe to those your ministers in earnest,
+I here personify and call my themes, to make them pass before ye.
+
+Behold, America! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!)
+For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;
+Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
+As in procession coming.
+
+Behold, the sea itself,
+And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;
+See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the
+	green and blue,
+See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port,
+See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke.
+
+Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
+Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
+Wielding all day their axes.
+
+Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen,
+How the ash writhes under those muscular arms!
+
+There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
+Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges,
+Overhand so steady, overhand they turn and fall with joyous clank,
+Like a tumult of laughter.
+
+Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents,
+Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising,
+See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.
+
+Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,
+Thy wealthy daughter-states, Eastern and Western,
+The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas,
+	and the rest,
+Thy limitless crops, grass, wheat, sugar, oil, corn, rice, hemp, hops,
+Thy barns all fill’d, the endless freight-train and the bulging store-house,
+The grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards,
+Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold
+	and silver,
+The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.
+
+All thine O sacred Union!
+Ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines,
+City and State, North, South, item and aggregate,
+We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!
+
+Protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all!
+For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,)
+Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home,
+Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure,
+Nor aught, nor any day secure.
+
+And thou, the Emblem waving over all!
+Delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,)
+Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably
+	ensovereign’d,
+In other scenes than these have I observ’d thee flag,
+Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of
+	stainless silk,
+But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter’d staff,
+Or clutch’d to some young color-bearer’s breast with desperate hands,
+Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long,
+’Mid cannons’ thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and yell, and
+	rifle-volleys cracking sharp,
+And moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as nothing risk’d,
+For thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp’d in blood,
+For sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might’st dally as now
+	secure up there,
+Many a good man have I seen go under.
+
+Now here and these and hence in peace, all thine O Flag!
+And here and hence for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!
+And here and hence O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
+None separate from thee--henceforth One only, we and thou,
+(For the blood of the children, what is it, only the blood maternal?
+And lives and works, what are they all at last, except the roads to
+	faith and death?)
+
+While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear Mother,
+We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee;
+Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross or lucre--
+	it is for thee, the soul in thee, electric, spiritual!
+Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and States in thee!
+Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Redwood-Tree
+
+A California song,
+A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,
+A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,
+A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
+Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.
+
+Farewell my brethren,
+Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,
+My time has ended, my term has come.
+
+Along the northern coast,
+Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,
+In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,
+With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse,
+With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong arms,
+Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood
+	forest dense,
+I heard the might tree its death-chant chanting.
+
+The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,
+The quick-ear’d teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,
+As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to
+	join the refrain,
+But in my soul I plainly heard.
+
+Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
+Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,
+Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,
+That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but
+	the future.
+
+You untold life of me,
+And all you venerable and innocent joys,
+Perennial hardy life of me with joys ’mid rain and many a summer sun,
+And the white snows and night and the wild winds;
+O the great patient rugged joys, my soul’s strong joys unreck’d by man,
+(For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness, identity,
+And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,)
+Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
+Our time, our term has come.
+
+Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,
+We who have grandly fill’d our time,
+With Nature’s calm content, with tacit huge delight,
+We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
+And leave the field for them.
+
+For them predicted long,
+For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,
+For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.’
+In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta, Nevadas,
+These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far Yosemite,
+To be in them absorb’d, assimilated.
+
+Then to a loftier strain,
+Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,
+As if the heirs, the deities of the West,
+Joining with master-tongue bore part.
+
+Not wan from Asia’s fetiches,
+Nor red from Europe’s old dynastic slaughter-house,
+(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
+	scaffolds everywhere,
+But come from Nature’s long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence,
+These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,
+To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,
+You promis’d long, we pledge, we dedicate.
+
+You occult deep volitions,
+You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois’d on yourself,
+	giving not taking law,
+You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and
+	love and aught that comes from life and love,
+You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, age
+	upon age working in death the same as life,)
+You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould
+	the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,
+You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal’d but ever alert,
+You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may-be
+	unconscious of yourselves,
+Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;
+You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
+	statutes, literatures,
+Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,
+	lands of the Western shore,
+We pledge, we dedicate to you.
+
+For man of you, your characteristic race,
+Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate to Nature,
+Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck’d by wall or roof,
+Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure,
+Here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others’ formulas heed,)
+here fill his time,
+To duly fall, to aid, unreck’d at last,
+To disappear, to serve.
+
+Thus on the northern coast,
+In the echo of teamsters’ calls and the clinking chains, and the
+	music of choppers’ axes,
+The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan,
+Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic,
+	ancient and rustling,
+The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,
+All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
+From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah,
+To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,
+The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the
+	settlements, features all,
+In the Mendocino woods I caught.
+
+The flashing and golden pageant of California,
+The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,
+The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south,
+Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs,
+The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry,
+The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening,
+	the rich ores forming beneath;
+At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
+A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere,
+Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the
+	whole world,
+To India and China and Australia and the thousand island paradises
+	of the Pacific,
+Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,
+	the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
+And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.
+
+But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore,
+(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)
+I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
+	till now deferr’d,
+Promis’d to be fulfill’d, our common kind, the race.
+
+The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,
+In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees imperial,
+In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even vital air.
+
+Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,
+I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,
+Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of
+	the past so grand,
+To build a grander future.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Song for Occupations
+
+A song for occupations!
+In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find
+	the developments,
+And find the eternal meanings.
+
+Workmen and Workwomen!
+Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of
+	me, what would it amount to?
+Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,
+	what would it amount to?
+Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?
+
+The learn’d, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,
+A man like me and never the usual terms.
+
+Neither a servant nor a master I,
+I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my
+	own whoever enjoys me,
+I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.
+
+If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in the
+	same shop,
+If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as
+	good as your brother or dearest friend,
+If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be
+	personally as welcome,
+If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,
+If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you think I
+	cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw’d deeds?
+If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,
+If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why
+	I often meet strangers in the street and love them.
+
+Why what have you thought of yourself?
+Is it you then that thought yourself less?
+Is it you that thought the President greater than you?
+Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?
+
+(Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief,
+Or that you are diseas’d, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,
+Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and never
+	saw your name in print,
+Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)
+
+Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,
+	untouchable and untouching,
+It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether
+	you are alive or no,
+I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
+
+Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,
+	in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,
+And all else behind or through them.
+
+The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,
+The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,
+The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.
+
+Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,
+Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,
+Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
+All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,
+None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.
+
+I bring what you much need yet always have,
+Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,
+I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but
+	offer the value itself.
+
+There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,
+It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussion
+	and print,
+It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
+It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your
+	hearing and sight are from you,
+It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.
+
+You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,
+You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it there,
+Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury
+	department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,
+Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts
+	of stock.
+
+The sun and stars that float in the open air,
+The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is
+	something grand,
+I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,
+And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or
+	bon-mot or reconnoissance,
+And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us,
+	and without luck must be a failure for us,
+And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.
+
+The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the
+	greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,
+The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,
+The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders
+	that fill each minute of time forever,
+What have you reckon’d them for, camerado?
+Have you reckon’d them for your trade or farm-work? or for the
+	profits of your store?
+Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure,
+	or a lady’s leisure?
+
+Have you reckon’d that the landscape took substance and form that it
+	might be painted in a picture?
+Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
+Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations
+	and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?
+Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
+Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
+Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or
+	agriculture itself?
+
+Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and
+	the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?
+Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,
+I rate them as high as the highest--then a child born of a woman and
+	man I rate beyond all rate.
+
+We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,
+I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,
+I am this day just as much in love with them as you,
+Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth.
+
+We consider bibles and religions divine--I do not say they are not divine,
+I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,
+It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,
+Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,
+	than they are shed out of you.
+
+The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,
+The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who
+	are here for him,
+The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,
+The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,
+Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the
+	going and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you.
+
+List close my scholars dear,
+Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,
+Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,
+The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records
+	reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,
+If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
+The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays would
+	be vacuums.
+
+All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,
+(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of
+	the arches and cornices?)
+
+All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,
+It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the
+	beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his
+	sweet romanza, nor that of the men’s chorus, nor that of the
+	women’s chorus,
+It is nearer and farther than they.
+
+Will the whole come back then?
+Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is
+	there nothing greater or more?
+Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul?
+
+Strange and hard that paradox true I give,
+Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.
+
+House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,
+Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,
+	shingle-dressing,
+Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers,
+The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brickkiln,
+Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,
+	echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts
+	looking through smutch’d faces,
+Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men
+	around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the
+	due combining of ore, limestone, coal,
+The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the
+	bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars
+	of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,
+Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,
+	steam-saws, the great mills and factories,
+Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or door-lintels,
+	the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,
+The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire
+	under the kettle,
+The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the
+	sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the
+	butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,
+The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,
+Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making,
+	glazier’s implements,
+The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner’s ornaments, the decanter
+	and glasses, the shears and flat-iron,
+The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the
+	counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making
+	of all sorts of edged tools,
+The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is done
+	by brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers,
+Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,
+	distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,
+	electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping,
+Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
+	ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,
+The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,
+Pyrotechny, letting off color’d fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets;
+Beef on the butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the
+	butcher in his killing-clothes,
+The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the
+	scalder’s tub, gutting, the cutter’s cleaver, the packer’s maul,
+	and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,
+Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and
+	the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles
+	on wharves and levees,
+The men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters,
+	fish-boats, canals;
+The hourly routine of your own or any man’s life, the shop, yard,
+	store, or factory,
+These shows all near you by day and night--workman! whoever you
+	are, your daily life!
+
+In that and them the heft of the heaviest--in that and them far more
+	than you estimated, (and far less also,)
+In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,
+In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things,
+	regardless of estimation,
+In them the development good--in them all themes, hints, possibilities.
+
+I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, I do not advise
+	you to stop,
+I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,
+But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to.
+
+Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,
+In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,
+In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,
+Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for
+	another hour but this hour,
+Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,
+	nighest neighbor--woman in mother, sister, wife,
+The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,
+You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine
+	and strong life,
+And all else giving place to men and women like you.
+When the psalm sings instead of the singer,
+
+When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
+When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved
+	the supporting desk,
+When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they
+	touch my body back again,
+When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child
+	convince,
+When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman’s daughter,
+When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly
+	companions,
+I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do
+	of men and women like you.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Song of the Rolling Earth
+
+A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
+Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
+	those curves, angles, dots?
+No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
+	and sea,
+They are in the air, they are in you.
+
+Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds
+	out of your friends’ mouths?
+No, the real words are more delicious than they.
+
+Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
+(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s,
+	well-shaped, natural, gay,
+Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)
+
+Air, soil, water, fire--those are words,
+I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with
+	theirs--my name is nothing to them,
+Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
+	air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?
+
+A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,
+	sayings, meanings,
+The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,
+	are sayings and meanings also.
+
+The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,
+The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible words.
+
+Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,
+The earth neither lags nor hastens,
+It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump,
+It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as
+	much as perfections show.
+
+The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,
+The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either,
+They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,
+They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,
+Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,
+I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?
+To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?
+
+(Accouche! accouchez!
+Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?
+Will you squat and stifle there?)
+
+The earth does not argue,
+Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
+Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
+Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
+Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
+Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.
+
+The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,
+	possesses still underneath,
+Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the
+	wail of slaves,
+Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young
+	people, accents of bargainers,
+Underneath these possessing words that never fall.
+
+To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail,
+The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection
+	does not fall,
+Also the day and night do not fall, and the voyage we pursue does not fall.
+
+Of the interminable sisters,
+Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,
+Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,
+The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.
+
+With her ample back towards every beholder,
+With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age,
+Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturb’d,
+Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her
+	eyes glance back from it,
+Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,
+Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.
+
+Seen at hand or seen at a distance,
+Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,
+Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,
+Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances
+	of those who are with them,
+From the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance,
+From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things,
+From the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of the sky,
+From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
+Every day in public appearing without fall, but never twice with the
+	same companions.
+
+Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and
+	sixty-five resistlessly round the sun;
+Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and
+	sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.
+
+Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,
+Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing, carrying,
+The soul’s realization and determination still inheriting,
+The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
+No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,
+Swift, glad, content, unbereav’d, nothing losing,
+Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,
+The divine ship sails the divine sea.
+
+Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
+The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
+
+Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
+You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
+For none more than you are the present and the past,
+For none more than you is immortality.
+
+Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
+	past and present, and the true word of immortality;
+No one can acquire for another--not one,
+Not one can grow for another--not one.
+
+The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
+The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
+The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
+The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
+The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
+The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him--it cannot fail,
+The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
+	not to the audience,
+And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
+	the indication of his own.
+
+I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall
+	be complete,
+The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains
+	jagged and broken.
+
+I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those
+	of the earth,
+There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
+	theory of the earth,
+No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
+	unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
+Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of
+	the earth.
+
+I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which
+	responds love,
+It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never refuses.
+
+I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
+All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth,
+Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth,
+Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.
+
+I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
+It is always to leave the best untold.
+
+When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,
+My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
+My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
+I become a dumb man.
+
+The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best,
+It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer,
+Things are not dismiss’d from the places they held before,
+The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before,
+Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before,
+But the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct,
+No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it,
+Undeniable growth has establish’d it.
+
+These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls,
+(If they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then?
+If they had not reference to you in especial what were they then?)
+
+I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells
+	the best,
+I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
+
+Say on, sayers! sing on, singers!
+Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
+Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,
+It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use,
+When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear.
+
+I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall,
+I swear to you they will understand you and justify you,
+The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses
+	all and is faithful to all,
+He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you
+	are not an iota less than they,
+You shall be fully glorified in them.
+
+
+
+
+Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
+
+Youth, large, lusty, loving--youth full of grace, force, fascination,
+Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,
+	force, fascination?
+
+Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action,
+	ambition, laughter,
+The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and
+	restoring darkness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Universal
+
+Come said the Muse,
+Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
+Sing me the universal.
+
+In this broad earth of ours,
+Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
+Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
+Nestles the seed perfection.
+
+By every life a share or more or less,
+None born but it is born, conceal’d or unconceal’d the seed is waiting.
+
+Lo! keen-eyed towering science,
+As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,
+Successive absolute fiats issuing.
+
+Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,
+For it has history gather’d like husks around the globe,
+For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
+
+In spiral routes by long detours,
+(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
+For it the partial to the permanent flowing,
+For it the real to the ideal tends.
+
+For it the mystic evolution,
+Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.
+
+Forth from their masks, no matter what,
+From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,
+Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.
+
+Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
+Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states,
+Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,
+Only the good is universal.
+
+Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,
+An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
+High in the purer, happier air.
+
+From imperfection’s murkiest cloud,
+Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
+One flash of heaven’s glory.
+
+To fashion’s, custom’s discord,
+To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
+Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,
+From some far shore the final chorus sounding.
+
+O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
+That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
+Along the mighty labyrinth.
+
+And thou America,
+For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,
+For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.
+
+Thou too surroundest all,
+Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new,
+To the ideal tendest.
+
+The measure’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,
+Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
+Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
+All eligible to all.
+
+All, all for immortality,
+Love like the light silently wrapping all,
+Nature’s amelioration blessing all,
+The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,
+Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.
+
+Give me O God to sing that thought,
+Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,
+In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,
+Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
+Health, peace, salvation universal.
+
+Is it a dream?
+Nay but the lack of it the dream,
+And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,
+And all the world a dream.
+
+
+
+
+Pioneers! O Pioneers!
+
+	Come my tan-faced children,
+Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
+Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	For we cannot tarry here,
+We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
+We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	O you youths, Western youths,
+So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
+Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Have the elder races halted?
+Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
+We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	All the past we leave behind,
+We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
+Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	We detachments steady throwing,
+Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
+Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	We primeval forests felling,
+We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
+We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Colorado men are we,
+From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
+From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
+Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
+	blood intervein’d,
+All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	O resistless restless race!
+O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
+O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Raise the mighty mother mistress,
+Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
+	(bend your heads all,)
+Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	See my children, resolute children,
+By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
+Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	On and on the compact ranks,
+With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
+Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	O to die advancing on!
+Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
+Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d.
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	All the pulses of the world,
+Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
+Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
+All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
+All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	All the hapless silent lovers,
+All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
+All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	I too with my soul and body,
+We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
+Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Lo, the darting bowling orb!
+Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
+All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	These are of us, they are with us,
+All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
+We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+O you daughters of the West!
+O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
+Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Minstrels latent on the prairies!
+(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
+Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Not for delectations sweet,
+Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
+Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
+Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
+Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Has the night descended?
+Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
+	on our way?
+Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+	Till with sound of trumpet,
+Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
+Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places,
+	Pioneers! O pioneers!
+
+
+
+
+To You
+
+Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
+I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,
+Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
+	troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
+Your true soul and body appear before me.
+They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
+	farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
+	suffering, dying.
+
+Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
+I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
+I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
+
+O I have been dilatory and dumb,
+I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
+I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing
+	but you.
+
+I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
+None has understood you, but I understand you,
+None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
+None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
+None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent
+	to subordinate you,
+I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
+	beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
+
+Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,
+From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light,
+But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus
+	of gold-color’d light,
+From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
+	effulgently flowing forever.
+
+O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
+You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself
+	all your life,
+Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
+What you have done returns already in mockeries,
+(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
+	mockeries, what is their return?)
+
+The mockeries are not you,
+Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
+I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
+Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
+	accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from
+	yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
+The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
+	balk others they do not balk me,
+The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,
+	premature death, all these I part aside.
+
+There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
+There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
+No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
+No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
+
+As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully
+	to you,
+I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
+	the songs of the glory of you.
+
+Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
+These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
+These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense
+	and interminable as they,
+These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
+	dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
+Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
+	passion, dissolution.
+
+The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
+Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
+	whatever you are promulges itself,
+Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
+	is scanted,
+Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
+	picks its way.
+
+
+
+
+France [the 18th Year of these States
+
+A great year and place
+A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s
+	heart closer than any yet.
+
+I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,
+Heard over the waves the little voice,
+Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the
+	roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings,
+Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single
+	corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils,
+Was not so desperate at the battues of death--was not so shock’d at
+	the repeated fusillades of the guns.
+
+Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
+Could I wish humanity different?
+Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
+Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
+
+O Liberty! O mate for me!
+Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch
+	them out in case of need,
+Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d,
+Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,
+Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
+
+Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
+And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
+But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with
+	perfect trust, no matter how long,
+And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as
+	for all lands,
+And I send these words to Paris with my love,
+And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,
+For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,
+O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be
+	drowning all that would interrupt them,
+O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
+It reaches hither, it swells me to Joyful madness,
+I will run transpose it in words, to justify
+I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.
+
+
+
+
+Myself and Mine
+
+Myself and mine gymnastic ever,
+To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a
+	boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,
+To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,
+And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.
+
+Not for an embroiderer,
+(There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,)
+But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.
+
+Not to chisel ornaments,
+But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
+	supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and talking.
+
+Let me have my own way,
+Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws,
+Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation
+	and conflict,
+I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was
+	thought most worthy.
+
+(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?
+Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all
+	your life?
+And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,
+Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)
+
+Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,
+I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern
+	continually.
+
+I give nothing as duties,
+What others give as duties I give as living impulses,
+(Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)
+
+Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse
+	unanswerable questions,
+Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
+What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender
+	directions and indirections?
+
+I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but
+	listen to my enemies, as I myself do,
+I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot
+	expound myself,
+I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,
+I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.
+
+After me, vista!
+O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
+I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a
+	steady grower,
+Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.
+
+I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,
+I perceive I have no time to lose.
+
+
+
+
+Year of Meteors [1859-60
+
+Year of meteors! brooding year!
+I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,
+I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,
+I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the
+	scaffold in Virginia,
+(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,
+I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling
+	with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;)
+I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,
+The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships
+	and their cargoes,
+The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with
+	immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,
+Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,
+And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young
+	prince of England!
+(Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your
+	cortege of nobles?
+There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)
+Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,
+Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was
+	600 feet long,
+Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not
+	to sing;
+Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,
+Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting
+	over our heads,
+(A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over
+	our heads,
+Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
+Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would
+	gleam and patch these chants,
+Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good--year of forebodings!
+Year of comets and meteors transient and strange--lo! even here one
+	equally transient and strange!
+As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,
+What am I myself but one of your meteors?
+
+
+
+
+With Antecedents
+
+With antecedents,
+With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages,
+With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am,
+With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome,
+With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon,
+With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys,
+With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle,
+With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the
+	crusader, and the monk,
+With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent,
+With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,
+With the fading religions and priests,
+With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores,
+With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years,
+You and me arrived--America arrived and making this year,
+This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.
+
+O but it is not the years--it is I, it is You,
+We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,
+We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily
+	include them and more,
+We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good,
+All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,
+The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,
+Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.
+
+As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)
+I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,
+I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.
+
+(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?
+Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)
+
+I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,
+I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demigod,
+I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without
+	exception,
+I assert that all past days were what they must have been,
+And that they could no-how have been better than they were,
+And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,
+And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.
+
+In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,
+And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time.
+
+I know that the past was great and the future will be great,
+And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,
+(For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake,
+	your sake if you are he,)
+And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre
+	of all days, all races,
+And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races
+	and days, or ever will come.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Broadway Pageant
+
+Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
+Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,
+Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
+Ride to-day through Manhattan.
+
+Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
+In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers,
+Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching,
+But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.
+
+When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,
+When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love,
+When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love
+	spit their salutes,
+When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and
+	heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,
+When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the
+	wharves, thicken with colors,
+When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,
+When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,
+When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and
+	foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
+When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes
+	gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,
+When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves
+	forward visible,
+When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands
+	of years answers,
+I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the
+	crowd, and gaze with them.
+
+Superb-faced Manhattan!
+Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.
+To us, my city,
+Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite
+	sides, to walk in the space between,
+To-day our Antipodes comes.
+
+The Originatress comes,
+The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,
+Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,
+Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
+With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,
+The race of Brahma comes.
+
+See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,
+As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.
+
+
+For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only,
+Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself
+	appears, the past, the dead,
+The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,
+The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
+The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the
+	ancient of ancients,
+Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more
+	are in the pageant-procession.
+
+Geography, the world, is in it,
+The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,
+The coast you henceforth are facing--you Libertad! from your Western
+	golden shores,
+The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse
+	are curiously here,
+The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the
+	sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,
+Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,
+The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the
+	secluded emperors,
+Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes,
+	all,
+Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,
+From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,
+From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from
+	Malaysia,
+These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and
+	are seiz’d by me,
+And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them,
+Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.
+
+For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,
+I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,
+I chant the world on my Western sea,
+I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,
+I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it
+	comes to me,
+I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,
+I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those
+	groups of sea-islands,
+My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,
+My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,
+Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races
+	reborn, refresh’d,
+Lives, works resumed--the object I know not--but the old, the Asiatic
+	renew’d as it must be,
+Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.
+
+And you Libertad of the world!
+You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of years,
+As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,
+As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her
+	eldest son to you.
+
+The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,
+The ring is circled, the journey is done,
+The box-lid is but perceptibly open’d, nevertheless the perfume
+	pours copiously out of the whole box.
+
+Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,
+Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you are all,
+Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages
+	over the archipelagoes to you,
+Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.
+
+Here the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping?
+Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?
+Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while
+	unknown, for you, for reasons?
+
+They are justified, they are accomplish’d, they shall now be turn’d
+	the other way also, to travel toward you thence,
+They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
+
+Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
+Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
+Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
+Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
+	leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
+Down from the shower’d halo,
+Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they
+	were alive,
+Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
+From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
+From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
+From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
+From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
+From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
+From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
+From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
+From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
+As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
+Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
+A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
+Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
+I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
+Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
+A reminiscence sing.
+
+Once Paumanok,
+When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
+Up this seashore in some briers,
+Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,
+And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
+And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
+And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
+And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing
+them,
+Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
+
+Shine! shine! shine!
+Pour down your warmth, great sun.’
+While we bask, we two together.
+
+Two together!
+Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
+Day come white, or night come black,
+Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
+Singing all time, minding no time,
+While we two keep together.
+
+Till of a sudden,
+May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,
+One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,
+Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,
+Nor ever appear’d again.
+
+And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
+And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
+Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
+Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
+I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
+The solitary guest from Alabama.
+
+Blow! blow! blow!
+Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;
+I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
+
+Yes, when the stars glisten’d,
+All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,
+Down almost amid the slapping waves,
+Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.
+
+He call’d on his mate,
+He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.
+
+Yes my brother I know,
+The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,
+For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
+Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
+Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights
+	after their sorts,
+The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
+I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
+Listen’d long and long.
+
+Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
+Following you my brother.
+
+Soothe! soothe! soothe!
+Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
+And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
+But my love soothes not me, not me.
+
+Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
+It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.
+
+O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
+With love, with love.
+
+O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
+What is that little black thing I see there in the white?
+
+Loud! loud! loud!
+Loud I call to you, my love!
+High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,
+Surely you must know who is here, is here,
+You must know who I am, my love.
+
+Low-hanging moon!
+What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
+O it is the shape, the shape of my mate.’
+O moon do not keep her from me any longer.
+
+Land! land! O land!
+Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again
+	if you only would,
+For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
+
+O rising stars!
+Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
+
+O throat! O trembling throat!
+Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
+Pierce the woods, the earth,
+Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.
+
+Shake out carols!
+Solitary here, the night’s carols!
+Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols!
+Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!
+O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!
+O reckless despairing carols.
+
+But soft! sink low!
+Soft! let me just murmur,
+And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea,
+For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
+So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,
+But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.
+
+Hither my love!
+Here I am! here!
+With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you,
+This gentle call is for you my love, for you.
+
+Do not be decoy’d elsewhere,
+That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
+That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
+Those are the shadows of leaves.
+
+O darkness! O in vain!
+O I am very sick and sorrowful
+
+O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
+O troubled reflection in the sea!
+O throat! O throbbing heart!
+And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
+
+O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
+In the air, in the woods, over fields,
+Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
+But my mate no more, no more with me!
+We two together no more.
+
+The aria sinking,
+All else continuing, the stars shining,
+The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
+With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,
+On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,
+The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of
+	the sea almost touching,
+The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the
+	atmosphere dallying,
+The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously
+	bursting,
+The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
+The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,
+The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,
+The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,
+To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing,
+To the outsetting bard.
+
+Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
+Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
+For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,
+Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
+And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder
+	and more sorrowful than yours,
+A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
+
+O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
+O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
+Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
+Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
+Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
+	there in the night,
+By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
+The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,
+The unknown want, the destiny of me.
+
+O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)
+O if I am to have so much, let me have more!
+
+A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
+The word final, superior to all,
+Subtle, sent up--what is it?--I listen;
+Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?
+Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
+
+Whereto answering, the sea,
+Delaying not, hurrying not,
+Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,
+Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,
+And again death, death, death, death
+Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart,
+But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
+Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,
+Death, death, death, death, death.
+
+Which I do not forget.
+But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
+That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach,
+With the thousand responsive songs at random,
+My own songs awaked from that hour,
+And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
+The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
+That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
+(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet
+	garments, bending aside,)
+The sea whisper’d me.
+
+
+
+
+As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
+
+As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,
+As I wended the shores I know,
+As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
+Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
+Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
+I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
+Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
+Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
+The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land
+	of the globe.
+
+Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those
+	slender windrows,
+Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
+Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
+Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
+Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses,
+These you presented to me you fish-shaped island,
+As I wended the shores I know,
+As I walk’d with that electric self seeking types.
+
+As I wend to the shores I know not,
+As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
+As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
+As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
+I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,
+A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
+Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
+
+O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,
+Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
+Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have
+	not once had the least idea who or what I am,
+But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
+	untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,
+Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
+With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
+Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
+
+I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
+	object, and that no man ever can,
+Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon
+	me and sting me,
+Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
+
+You oceans both, I close with you,
+We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why,
+These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all.
+
+You friable shore with trails of debris,
+You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot,
+What is yours is mine my father.
+
+I too Paumanok,
+I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been
+	wash’d on your shores,
+I too am but a trail of drift and debris,
+I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.
+
+I throw myself upon your breast my father,
+I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,
+I hold you so firm till you answer me something.
+
+Kiss me my father,
+Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,
+Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy.
+
+Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
+Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,
+Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me,
+Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or
+	gather from you.
+
+I mean tenderly by you and all,
+I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead,
+	and following me and mine.
+
+Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,
+Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
+(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,
+See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)
+Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
+Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
+From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,
+Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,
+Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,
+A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,
+	drifted at random,
+Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,
+Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,
+We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,
+You up there walking or sitting,
+Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.
+
+
+
+
+Tears
+
+Tears! tears! tears!
+In the night, in solitude, tears,
+On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck’d in by the sand,
+Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,
+Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
+O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
+What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch’d there on the sand?
+Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;
+O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!
+O wild and dismal night storm, with wind--O belching and desperate!
+O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and
+	regulated pace,
+But away at night as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosen’d ocean,
+Of tears! tears! tears!
+
+
+
+
+To the Man-of-War-Bird
+
+Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
+Waking renew’d on thy prodigious pinions,
+(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended’st,
+And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
+Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
+As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
+(Myself a speck, a point on the world’s floating vast.)
+
+Far, far at sea,
+After the night’s fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,
+With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
+The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
+The limpid spread of air cerulean,
+Thou also re-appearest.
+
+Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
+To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
+Thou ship of air that never furl’st thy sails,
+Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,
+At dusk that lookist on Senegal, at morn America,
+That sport’st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
+In them, in thy experiences, had’st thou my soul,
+What joys! what joys were thine!
+
+
+
+
+Aboard at a Ship’s Helm
+
+Aboard at a ship’s helm,
+A young steersman steering with care.
+
+Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
+An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves.
+
+O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
+Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
+
+For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
+The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails,
+The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds
+	away gayly and safe.
+
+But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
+Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.
+
+
+
+
+On the Beach at Night
+
+On the beach at night,
+Stands a child with her father,
+Watching the east, the autumn sky.
+
+Up through the darkness,
+While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
+Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
+Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
+Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
+And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
+Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
+
+From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
+Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
+Watching, silently weeps.
+
+Weep not, child,
+Weep not, my darling,
+With these kisses let me remove your tears,
+The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
+They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in
+	apparition,
+Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the
+	Pleiades shall emerge,
+They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall
+	shine out again,
+The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
+The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall
+	again shine.
+
+Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter?
+Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
+
+Something there is,
+(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
+I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
+Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
+(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
+Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
+Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
+Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
+
+
+
+
+The World below the Brine
+
+The world below the brine,
+Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
+Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick
+	tangle openings, and pink turf,
+Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the
+	play of light through the water,
+Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,
+	and the aliment of the swimmers,
+Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling
+	close to the bottom,
+The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting
+	with his flukes,
+The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy
+	sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,
+Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,
+	breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
+The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed
+	by beings like us who walk this sphere,
+The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.
+
+
+
+
+On the Beach at Night Alone
+
+On the beach at night alone,
+As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
+As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
+	of the universes and of the future.
+
+A vast similitude interlocks all,
+All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
+All distances of place however wide,
+All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
+All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
+	different worlds,
+All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
+All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
+All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
+All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
+This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
+And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
+
+
+
+
+Song for All Seas, All Ships
+
+To-day a rude brief recitative,
+Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal,
+Of unnamed heroes in the ships--of waves spreading and spreading
+	far as the eye can reach,
+Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing,
+And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations,
+Fitful, like a surge.
+
+Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors,
+Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor
+	death dismay.
+Pick’d sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee,
+Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations,
+Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee,
+Indomitable, untamed as thee.
+
+(Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,
+Ever the stock preserv’d and never lost, though rare, enough for
+	seed preserv’d.)
+
+Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!
+Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!
+But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man
+	one flag above all the rest,
+A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,
+Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates,
+And all that went down doing their duty,
+Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old,
+A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all brave sailors,
+All seas, all ships.
+
+
+
+
+Patroling Barnegat
+
+Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
+Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
+Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
+Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
+Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
+On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
+Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
+Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
+(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
+Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
+Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
+Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
+A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
+That savage trinity warily watching.
+
+
+
+
+After the Sea-Ship
+
+After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
+After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,
+Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
+Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
+Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
+Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
+Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
+Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,
+Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing,
+The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome
+	under the sun,
+A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,
+Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Boston Ballad [1854]
+
+To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early,
+Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.
+
+Clear the way there Jonathan!
+Way for the President’s marshal--way for the government cannon!
+Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions
+	copiously tumbling.)
+
+I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play
+	Yankee Doodle.
+How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
+Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.
+
+A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,
+Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.
+
+Why this is indeed a show--it has called the dead out of the earth!
+The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!
+Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!
+Cock’d hats of mothy mould--crutches made of mist!
+Arms in slings--old men leaning on young men’s shoulders.
+
+What troubles you Yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of
+	bare gums?
+Does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your crutches for
+	firelocks and level them?
+
+If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President’s marshal,
+If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.
+
+For shame old maniacs--bring down those toss’d arms, and let your
+	white hair be,
+Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows,
+See how well dress’d, see how orderly they conduct themselves.
+
+Worse and worse--can’t you stand it? are you retreating?
+Is this hour with the living too dead for you?
+
+Retreat then--pell-mell!
+To your graves--back--back to the hills old limpers!
+I do not think you belong here anyhow.
+
+But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it
+	is, gentlemen of Boston?
+
+I will whisper it to the Mayor, he shall send a committee to England,
+They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the
+	royal vault,
+Dig out King George’s coffin, unwrap him quick from the
+	graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey,
+Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper,
+Up with your anchor--shake out your sails--steer straight toward
+	Boston bay.
+
+Now call for the President’s marshal again, bring out the government cannon,
+Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession,
+	guard it with foot and dragoons.
+
+This centre-piece for them;
+Look, all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women!
+
+The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that
+	will not stay,
+Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.
+You have got your revenge, old buster--the crown is come to its own,
+	and more than its own.
+
+Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from
+	this day,
+You are mighty cute--and here is one of your bargains.
+
+
+
+
+Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
+
+Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
+Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself,
+Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats
+	of kings.
+
+O hope and faith!
+O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
+O many a sicken’d heart!
+Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.
+
+And you, paid to defile the People--you liars, mark!
+Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
+For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his
+	simplicity the poor man’s wages,
+For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh’d at in
+	the breaking,
+
+Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge,
+	or the heads of the nobles fall;
+The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.
+
+But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the
+	frighten’d monarchs come back,
+Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
+Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
+
+Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape,
+Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in
+	scarlet folds,
+Whose face and eyes none may see,
+Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm,
+One finger crook’d pointed high over the top, like the head of a
+	snake appears.
+
+Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men,
+The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are
+	flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
+And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.
+
+Those corpses of young men,
+Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc’d by
+	the gray lead,
+Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality.
+
+They live in other young men O kings!
+They live in brothers again ready to defy you,
+They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.
+
+Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom,
+	in its turn to bear seed,
+Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
+
+Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
+But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.
+Liberty, let others despair of you--I never despair of you.
+
+Is the house shut? is the master away?
+Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,
+He will soon return, his messengers come anon.
+
+
+
+
+A Hand-Mirror
+
+Hold it up sternly--see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?)
+Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth,
+No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
+Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,
+A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,
+Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
+Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
+Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
+Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
+No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
+Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
+Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!
+
+
+
+
+Gods
+
+Lover divine and perfect Comrade,
+Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,
+Be thou my God.
+
+Thou, thou, the Ideal Man,
+Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
+Complete in body and dilate in spirit,
+Be thou my God.
+
+O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)
+Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion,
+Be thou my God.
+
+Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,
+(To break the stagnant tie--thee, thee to free, O soul,)
+Be thou my God.
+
+All great ideas, the races’ aspirations,
+All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,
+Be ye my Gods.
+
+Or Time and Space,
+Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,
+Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,
+Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,
+Be ye my Gods.
+
+
+
+
+Germs
+
+Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,
+The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars,
+The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,
+Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants,
+	whatever they may be,
+Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects,
+Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand
+	provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and
+	half enclose with my hand,
+That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all.
+
+
+
+
+Thoughts
+
+Of ownership--as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter
+	upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself;
+Of vista--suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos,
+	presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey,
+(But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;)
+Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become
+	supplied--and of what will yet be supplied,
+Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in
+	what will yet be supplied.
+
+
+
+When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
+
+When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
+When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
+When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
+When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much
+	applause in the lecture-room,
+How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
+Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
+In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
+Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
+
+
+
+
+Perfections
+
+Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
+As souls only understand souls.
+
+
+
+
+O Me! O Life!
+
+O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
+Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
+Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
+	and who more faithless?)
+Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
+	struggle ever renew’d,
+Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
+	around me,
+Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
+The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?
+
+	Answer.
+That you are here--that life exists and identity,
+That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
+
+
+
+
+To a President
+
+All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
+You have not learn’d of Nature--of the politics of Nature you have
+	not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality,
+You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,
+And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from
+	these States.
+
+
+
+
+I Sit and Look Out
+
+I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
+	oppression and shame,
+I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
+	themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
+I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
+	neglected, gaunt, desperate,
+I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
+	of young women,
+I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
+	hid, I see these sights on the earth,
+I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
+	prisoners,
+I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
+	shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,
+I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
+	laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
+All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
+See, hear, and am silent.
+
+
+
+
+To Rich Givers
+
+What you give me I cheerfully accept,
+A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I
+	rendezvous with my poems,
+A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as journey through the States,--
+	why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them?
+For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman,
+For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of
+	the universe.
+
+
+
+
+The Dalliance of the Eagles
+
+Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
+Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
+The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
+The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
+Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
+In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
+Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
+A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
+Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
+She hers, he his, pursuing.
+
+
+
+
+Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]
+
+Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good
+	steadily hastening towards immortality,
+And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself
+	and become lost and dead.
+
+
+
+
+A Farm Picture
+
+Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
+A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,
+And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.
+
+
+
+
+A Child’s Amaze
+
+Silent and amazed even when a little boy,
+I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,
+As contending against some being or influence.
+
+
+
+
+The Runner
+
+On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner,
+He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
+He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,
+With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d.
+
+
+
+
+Beautiful Women
+
+Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,
+The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.
+
+
+
+
+Mother and Babe
+
+I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother,
+The sleeping mother and babe--hush’d, I study them long and long.
+
+
+
+
+Thought
+
+Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
+As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
+	affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who
+	do not believe in men.
+
+
+
+
+Visor’d
+
+A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
+Concealing her face, concealing her form,
+Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
+Falling upon her even when she sleeps.
+
+
+
+
+Thought
+
+Of justice--as If could be any thing but the same ample law,
+	expounded by natural judges and saviors,
+As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.
+
+
+
+
+Gliding O’er all
+
+Gliding o’er all, through all,
+Through Nature, Time, and Space,
+As a ship on the waters advancing,
+The voyage of the soul--not life alone,
+Death, many deaths I’ll sing.
+
+
+
+
+Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
+
+Hast never come to thee an hour,
+A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,
+	fashions, wealth?
+These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,
+To utter nothingness?
+
+
+
+
+Thought
+
+Of Equality--as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and
+	rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own
+	rights that others possess the same.
+
+
+
+
+To Old Age
+
+I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as
+	it pours in the great sea.
+
+
+
+
+Locations and Times
+
+Locations and times--what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
+	and wherever, and makes me at home?
+Forms, colors, densities, odors--what is it in me that corresponds
+	with them?
+
+
+
+
+Offerings
+
+A thousand perfect men and women appear,
+Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
+	youths, with offerings.
+
+
+
+
+To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]
+
+Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
+What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters,
+Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
+What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,
+	your arctic freezings!)
+Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that
+	the President?
+Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for
+	reasons;
+(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we
+	all duly awake,
+South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+First O Songs for a Prelude
+
+First O songs for a prelude,
+Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,
+How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,
+How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,
+(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
+O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)
+How you sprang--how you threw off the costumes of peace with
+	indifferent hand,
+How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard
+	in their stead,
+How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of
+	soldiers,)
+How Manhattan drum-taps led.
+
+Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
+Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and
+	turbulent city,
+Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
+With her million children around her, suddenly,
+At dead of night, at news from the south,
+Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.
+
+A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,
+Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.
+
+From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
+Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.
+
+To the drum-taps prompt,
+The young men falling in and arming,
+The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s
+	hammer, tost aside with precipitation,)
+The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,
+The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing
+	the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs,
+The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;
+Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,
+The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their
+	accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,
+Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,
+The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the
+	sunrise cannon and again at sunset,
+Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark
+	from the wharves,
+(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with
+	their guns on their shoulders!
+How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and
+	their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)
+The blood of the city up-arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere,
+The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the
+	public buildings and stores,
+The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother,
+(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,)
+The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,
+The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites,
+The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along,
+	rumble lightly over the stones,
+(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,
+Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;)
+All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming,
+The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,
+The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no
+	mere parade now;
+War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away!
+War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to
+	welcome it.
+
+Mannahatta a-march--and it’s O to sing it well!
+It’s O for a manly life in the camp.
+
+And the sturdy artillery,
+The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,
+Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for
+	courtesies merely,
+Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)
+
+And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,
+Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,
+Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d amid
+	all your children,
+But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.
+
+
+
+
+Eighteen Sixty-One
+
+Arm’d year--year of the struggle,
+No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,
+Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano,
+But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
+	carrying rifle on your shoulder,
+With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in
+	the belt at your side,
+As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the
+	continent,
+Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,
+Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the
+	dwellers in Manhattan,
+Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
+Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies,
+Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along
+	the Ohio river,
+Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
+	Chattanooga on the mountain top,
+Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing
+	weapons, robust year,
+Heard your determin’d voice launch’d forth again and again,
+Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon,
+I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.
+
+
+
+
+Beat! Beat! Drums!
+
+Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!
+Through the windows--through doors--burst like a ruthless force,
+Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
+Into the school where the scholar is studying;
+Leave not the bridegroom quiet--no happiness must he have now with
+	his bride,
+Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering
+	his grain,
+So fierce you whirr and pound you drums--so shrill you bugles blow.
+
+Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!
+Over the traffic of cities--over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
+Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers
+	must sleep in those beds,
+No bargainers’ bargains by day--no brokers or speculators--would
+	they continue?
+Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
+Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
+Then rattle quicker, heavier drums--you bugles wilder blow.
+
+Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!
+Make no parley--stop for no expostulation,
+Mind not the timid--mind not the weeper or prayer,
+Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
+Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
+Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the
+	hearses,
+So strong you thump O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow.
+
+
+
+
+From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
+
+From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird,
+Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all,
+To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,
+To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,
+To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
+Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and
+	Arkansas to sing theirs,
+To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs,
+To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;
+To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,)
+The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,
+And then the song of each member of these States.
+
+
+
+
+Song of the Banner at Daybreak
+
+	Poet:
+O A new song, a free song,
+Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
+By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,
+By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice,
+Low on the ground and high in the air,
+On the ground where father and child stand,
+In the upward air where their eyes turn,
+Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.
+
+Words! book-words! what are you?
+Words no more, for hearken and see,
+My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,
+With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
+
+I’ll weave the chord and twine in,
+Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,
+I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz,
+(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,
+Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)
+I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,
+Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,
+With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
+
+	Pennant:
+Come up here, bard, bard,
+Come up here, soul, soul,
+Come up here, dear little child,
+To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.
+
+	Child:
+Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?
+And what does it say to me all the while?
+
+	Father:
+Nothing my babe you see in the sky,
+And nothing at all to you it says--but look you my babe,
+Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-
+	shops opening,
+And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;
+These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!
+How envied by all the earth.
+
+	Poet:
+Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,
+On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,
+On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
+The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,
+Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.
+
+But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
+I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
+Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
+Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
+But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
+Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
+Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
+And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
+Aloft there flapping and flapping.
+
+	Child:
+O father it is alive--it is full of people--it has children,
+O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,
+I hear it--it talks to me--O it is wonderful!
+O it stretches--it spreads and runs so fast--O my father,
+It is so broad it covers the whole sky.
+
+	Father:
+Cease, cease, my foolish babe,
+What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much ’t displeases me;
+Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,
+But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d houses.
+
+	Banner and Pennant:
+Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,
+To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
+Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all--and yet we know
+	not why,
+For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,
+Only flapping in the wind?
+
+
+	Poet:
+I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,
+I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,
+I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!
+I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,
+I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,
+I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird,
+	and look down as from a height,
+I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities
+	with wealth incalculable,
+I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns,
+I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded, going
+	up, or finish’d,
+I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by
+	the locomotives,
+I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,
+I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering,
+I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern
+	plantation, and again to California;
+Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings,
+	earn’d wages,
+See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty
+	States, (and many more to come,)
+See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out;
+Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant shaped
+	like a sword,
+Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance--and now the halyards
+	have rais’d it,
+Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,
+Discarding peace over all the sea and land.
+
+	Banner and Pennant:
+Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!
+No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,
+We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,
+Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor
+	any five, nor ten,)
+Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,
+But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines
+	below, are ours,
+And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small,
+And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours,
+Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours--while we over all,
+Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square
+	miles, the capitals,
+The forty millions of people,--O bard! in life and death supreme,
+We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,
+Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you,
+This song to the soul of one poor little child.
+
+	Child:
+O my father I like not the houses,
+They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money,
+But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like,
+That pennant I would be and must be.
+
+	Father:
+Child of mine you fill me with anguish,
+To be that pennant would be too fearful,
+Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,
+It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing,
+Forward to stand in front of wars--and O, such wars!--what have you
+	to do with them?
+With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
+
+	Banner:
+Demons and death then I sing,
+Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,
+And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,
+Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,
+And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke,
+And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,
+And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the
+	hot sun shining south,
+And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore,
+	and my Western shore the same,
+And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi with
+	bends and chutes,
+And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri,
+The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom,
+Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all,
+Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,
+No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,
+But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,
+Croaking like crows here in the wind.
+
+	Poet:
+My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,
+Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute,
+I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded,
+My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,)
+I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,
+Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner!
+Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their
+	prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those
+	houses to destroy them,
+You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast,
+	full of comfort, built with money,
+May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all
+	stand fast;)
+O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor
+	the material good nutriment,
+Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,
+Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and
+	carrying cargoes,
+Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues--but you as henceforth
+	I see you,
+Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars,
+	(ever-enlarging stars,)
+Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun,
+	measuring the sky,
+(Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,
+While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching
+	thrift, thrift;)
+O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing
+	so curious,
+Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody
+	death, loved by me,
+So loved--O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night!
+Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all--(absolute
+	owner of all)--O banner and pennant!
+I too leave the rest--great as it is, it is nothing--houses, machines
+	are nothing--I see them not,
+I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes,
+	sing you only,
+Flapping up there in the wind.
+
+
+
+
+Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
+
+Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep,
+Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me,
+Long I roam’d amid the woods of the north, long I watch’d Niagara pouring,
+I travel’d the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross’d
+	the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus,
+I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea,
+I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm,
+I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves,
+
+I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over,
+I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds,
+Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my
+	heart, and powerful!)
+Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow’d after the lightning,
+Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and
+	fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;
+These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive
+	and masterful,
+All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,
+Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.
+
+’Twas well, O soul--’twas a good preparation you gave me,
+Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,
+Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us,
+Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities,
+Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,
+Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed
+	inexhaustible?)
+What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of
+	the mountains and sea?
+What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen?
+Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
+Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage,
+Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago,
+	unchain’d;
+What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here,
+How it climbs with daring feet and hands--how it dashes!
+How the true thunder bellows after the lightning--how bright the
+	flashes of lightning!
+How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown
+	through the dark by those flashes of lightning!
+(Yet a mournful wall and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
+In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
+
+Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!
+And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities!
+Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,
+My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment,
+Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads through farms, only
+	half satisfied,
+One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me,
+Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low;
+The cities I loved so well I abandon’d and left, I sped to the
+	certainties suitable to me,
+Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature’s
+	dauntlessness,
+I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only,
+I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air
+	waited long;
+But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,
+I have witness’d the true lightning, I have witness’d my cities electric,
+I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,
+Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
+No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.
+
+
+
+
+Virginia--The West
+
+The noble sire fallen on evil days,
+I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,
+(Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)
+The insane knife toward the Mother of All.
+
+The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,
+I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio’s waters and of Indiana,
+To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,
+Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.
+
+Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,
+As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive against
+	me, and why seek my life?
+When you yourself forever provide to defend me?
+For you provided me Washington--and now these also.
+
+
+
+
+City of Ships
+
+City of ships!
+(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
+O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)
+City of the world! (for all races are here,
+All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
+City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
+City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and
+	out with eddies and foam!
+City of wharves and stores--city of tall facades of marble and iron!
+Proud and passionate city--mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
+Spring up O city--not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
+Fear not--submit to no models but your own O city!
+Behold me--incarnate me as I have incarnated you!
+I have rejected nothing you offer’d me--whom you adopted I have adopted,
+Good or bad I never question you--I love all--I do not condemn any thing,
+I chant and celebrate all that is yours--yet peace no more,
+In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,
+War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!
+
+
+
+
+The Centenarian’s Story
+
+	[Volunteer of 1861-2, at Washington Park, Brooklyn, assisting
+	the Centenarian.]
+Give me your hand old Revolutionary,
+The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,)
+Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and
+	extra years,
+You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done,
+Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.
+
+Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means,
+On the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising,
+There is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow,
+Do you hear the officers giving their orders?
+Do you hear the clank of the muskets?
+Why what comes over you now old man?
+Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively?
+The troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles,
+Around them at hand the well-drest friends and the women,
+While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down,
+Green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze,
+O’er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between.
+
+But drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters,
+Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!
+
+As wending the crowds now part and disperse--but we old man,
+Not for nothing have I brought you hither--we must remain,
+You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell.
+
+	[The Centenarian]
+When I clutch’d your hand it was not with terror,
+But suddenly pouring about me here on every side,
+And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran,
+And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see south and south-
+	east and south-west,
+Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods,
+And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over) came again and
+	suddenly raged,
+As eighty-five years agone no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends,
+But a battle which I took part in myself--aye, long ago as it is, I
+	took part in it,
+Walking then this hilltop, this same ground.
+
+Aye, this is the ground,
+My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled from graves,
+The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear,
+Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted,
+I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay,
+I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes;
+Here we lay encamp’d, it was this time in summer also.
+
+As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration,
+It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here,
+By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held up
+	his unsheath’d sword,
+It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army.
+
+’Twas a bold act then--the English war-ships had just arrived,
+We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,
+And the transports swarming with soldiers.
+
+A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.
+
+Twenty thousand were brought against us,
+A veteran force furnish’d with good artillery.
+
+I tell not now the whole of the battle,
+But one brigade early in the forenoon order’d forward to engage the
+	red-coats,
+Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d,
+And how long and well it stood confronting death.
+
+Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting death?
+It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
+Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known personally
+	to the General.
+
+Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters,
+Till of a sudden unlook’d for by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night,
+The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing
+	their guns,
+That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy’s mercy.
+
+The General watch’d them from this hill,
+They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment,
+Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle,
+But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them!
+
+It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
+I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General.
+I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish.
+
+Meanwhile the British manœuvr’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle,
+But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle.
+
+We fought the fight in detachments,
+Sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the luck was
+	against us,
+Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back
+	to the works on this hill,
+Till we turn’d menacing here, and then he left us.
+
+That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand
+	strong,
+Few return’d, nearly all remain in Brooklyn.
+
+That and here my General’s first battle,
+No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude
+	with applause,
+Nobody clapp’d hands here then.
+
+But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain,
+Wearied that night we lay foil’d and sullen,
+While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord off against us encamp’d,
+Quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wineglasses together over
+	their victory.
+
+So dull and damp and another day,
+But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing,
+Silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my
+	General retreated.
+
+I saw him at the river-side,
+Down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation;
+My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d over,
+And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for
+	the last time.
+
+Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom,
+Many no doubt thought of capitulation.
+
+But when my General pass’d me,
+As he stood in his boat and look’d toward the coming sun,
+I saw something different from capitulation.
+
+	[Terminus]
+Enough, the Centenarian’s story ends,
+The two, the past and present, have interchanged,
+I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.
+
+And is this the ground Washington trod?
+And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross’d,
+As resolute in defeat as other generals in their proudest triumphs?
+
+I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward,
+I must preserve that look as it beam’d on you rivers of Brooklyn.
+
+See--as the annual round returns the phantoms return,
+It is the 27th of August and the British have landed,
+The battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke
+	Washington’s face,
+The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to intercept
+	the enemy,
+They are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them,
+Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag,
+Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds.
+In death, defeat, and sisters’, mothers’ tears.
+
+Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable
+	than your owners supposed;
+In the midst of you stands an encampment very old,
+Stands forever the camp of that dead brigade.
+
+
+
+
+Cavalry Crossing a Ford
+
+A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,
+They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun--hark to
+	the musical clank,
+Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop
+	to drink,
+Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the
+	negligent rest on the saddles,
+Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford--while,
+Scarlet and blue and snowy white,
+The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.
+
+
+
+
+Bivouac on a Mountain Side
+
+I see before me now a traveling army halting,
+Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,
+Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,
+Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen,
+The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the
+	mountain,
+The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering,
+And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,
+	breaking out, the eternal stars.
+
+
+
+
+An Army Corps on the March
+
+With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
+With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an
+	irregular volley,
+The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,
+Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover’d men,
+In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
+With artillery interspers’d--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,
+As the army corps advances.
+
+
+
+
+By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
+
+By the bivouac’s fitful flame,
+A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow--but
+	first I note,
+The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,
+The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,
+Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,
+The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily
+	watching me,)
+While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
+Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that
+	are far away;
+A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
+By the bivouac’s fitful flame.
+
+
+
+
+Come Up from the Fields Father
+
+Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
+And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.
+
+Lo, ’tis autumn,
+Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
+Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the
+	moderate wind,
+Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,
+(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
+Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
+
+Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and
+	with wondrous clouds,
+Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.
+
+Down in the fields all prospers well,
+But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call.
+And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.
+
+Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
+She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
+
+Open the envelope quickly,
+O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,
+O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!
+All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main
+	words only,
+Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
+	taken to hospital,
+At present low, but will soon be better.
+
+Ah now the single figure to me,
+Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
+Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
+By the jamb of a door leans.
+
+Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through
+	her sobs,
+The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)
+See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
+
+Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be
+	better, that brave and simple soul,)
+While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
+The only son is dead.
+
+But the mother needs to be better,
+She with thin form presently drest in black,
+By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
+In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
+O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,
+To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
+
+
+
+
+Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
+
+Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;
+When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,
+One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I
+	shall never forget,
+One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground,
+Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle,
+Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way,
+Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of
+	responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)
+Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the
+	moderate night-wind,
+Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the
+	battlefield spreading,
+Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,
+But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed,
+Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my
+	chin in my hands,
+Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest
+	comrade--not a tear, not a word,
+Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier,
+As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
+Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
+I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall
+	surely meet again,)
+Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,
+My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,
+Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and
+	carefully under feet,
+And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his
+	grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited,
+Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim,
+Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)
+Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day
+	brighten’d,
+I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
+And buried him where he fell.
+
+
+
+
+A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
+
+A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
+A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
+Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
+Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,
+We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,
+’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital,
+Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and
+	poems ever made,
+Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
+And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and
+	clouds of smoke,
+By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some
+	in the pews laid down,
+At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of
+	bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)
+I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)
+Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,
+Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity,
+	some of them dead,
+Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether,
+	odor of blood,
+The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,
+Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the
+	death-spasm sweating,
+An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,
+The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of
+	the torches,
+These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,
+Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;
+But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,
+Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
+Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
+The unknown road still marching.
+
+
+
+
+A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
+
+A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
+As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
+As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,
+Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,
+Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
+Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
+
+Curious I halt and silent stand,
+Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first
+	just lift the blanket;
+Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair,
+	and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
+Who are you my dear comrade?
+Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling?
+Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
+Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
+	beautiful yellow-white ivory;
+Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the
+	Christ himself,
+Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
+
+
+
+
+As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods
+
+As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,
+To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,)
+I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
+Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could
+	understand,)
+The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose--yet this sign left,
+On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave,
+Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
+
+Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,
+Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
+Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or
+	in the crowded street,
+Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes the inscription
+	rude in Virginia’s woods,
+Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
+
+
+
+
+Not the Pilot
+
+Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port,
+	though beaten back and many times baffled;
+Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,
+By deserts parch’d, snows chill’d, rivers wet, perseveres till he
+	reaches his destination,
+More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose
+	march for these States,
+For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence.
+
+
+
+
+Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
+
+Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!
+Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
+A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me,
+Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
+Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
+And sullen hymns of defeat?
+
+
+
+
+The Wound-Dresser
+
+An old man bending I come among new faces,
+Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
+Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,
+(Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
+But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself,
+To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)
+Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
+Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
+Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,
+Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
+What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
+Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
+
+O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
+What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,
+Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust,
+In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the
+	rush of successful charge,
+Enter the captur’d works--yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade,
+Pass and are gone they fade--I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or
+	soldiers’ joys,
+(Both I remember well--many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)
+
+But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
+While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
+So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
+With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
+Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
+
+Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
+Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
+Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
+Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,
+Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,
+To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
+To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
+An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
+Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.
+
+I onward go, I stop,
+With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
+I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,
+One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you,
+Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that
+	would save you.
+
+On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
+The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)
+The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine,
+Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life
+	struggles hard,
+(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!
+In mercy come quickly.)
+
+From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
+I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
+Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,
+His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the
+	bloody stump,
+And has not yet look’d on it.
+
+I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
+But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
+And the yellow-blue countenance see.
+
+I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
+Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening,
+	so offensive,
+While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.
+
+I am faithful, I do not give out,
+The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
+These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast
+	a fire, a burning flame.)
+
+Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
+Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
+The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
+I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
+Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
+(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
+Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
+
+
+
+
+Long, Too Long America
+
+Long, too long America,
+Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and
+	prosperity only,
+But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
+	grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
+And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
+	en-masse really are,
+(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse
+	really are?)
+
+
+
+
+Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
+
+Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
+Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
+Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
+Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
+Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
+	content,
+Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
+	Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
+Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
+	walk undisturb’d,
+Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire,
+Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
+	world a rural domestic life,
+Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,
+Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
+	sanities!
+
+These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and
+	rack’d by the war-strife,)
+These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
+While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
+Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
+Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up,
+Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever faces;
+(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
+see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)
+
+Keep your splendid silent sun,
+Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
+Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
+Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
+Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and
+	endless along the trottoirs!
+Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and
+	lovers by the thousand!
+Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
+Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!
+Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of
+	the trumpets and drums!
+(The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flush’d
+	and reckless,
+Some, their time up, returning with thinn’d ranks, young, yet very
+	old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
+Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
+O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
+The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
+The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
+	torchlight procession!
+The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons
+	following;
+People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
+Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
+The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
+	the sight of the wounded,)
+Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
+Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
+
+
+
+
+Dirge for Two Veterans
+
+	The last sunbeam
+Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
+On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
+	Down a new-made double grave.
+
+	Lo, the moon ascending,
+Up from the east the silvery round moon,
+Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
+	Immense and silent moon.
+
+	I see a sad procession,
+And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles,
+All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,
+	As with voices and with tears.
+
+	I hear the great drums pounding,
+And the small drums steady whirring,
+And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
+	Strikes me through and through.
+
+	For the son is brought with the father,
+(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
+Two veterans son and father dropt together,
+	And the double grave awaits them.)
+
+	Now nearer blow the bugles,
+And the drums strike more convulsive,
+And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
+	And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
+
+	In the eastern sky up-buoying,
+The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d,
+(’Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
+	In heaven brighter growing.)
+
+	O strong dead-march you please me!
+O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
+O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
+	What I have I also give you.
+
+	The moon gives you light,
+And the bugles and the drums give you music,
+And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
+	My heart gives you love.
+
+
+
+
+Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
+
+Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
+Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
+Those who love each other shall become invincible,
+They shall yet make Columbia victorious.
+
+Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,
+You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.
+
+No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,
+If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.
+
+One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade,
+From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall
+	be friends triune,
+More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.
+
+To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come,
+Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.
+
+It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection,
+The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,
+The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
+The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.
+
+These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,
+I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.
+
+(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
+Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
+Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)
+
+
+
+
+I Saw Old General at Bay
+
+I saw old General at bay,
+(Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,)
+His small force was now completely hemm’d in, in his works,
+He call’d for volunteers to run the enemy’s lines, a desperate emergency,
+I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or three
+	were selected,
+I saw them receive their orders aside, they listen’d with care, the
+	adjutant was very grave,
+I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.
+
+
+
+
+The Artilleryman’s Vision
+
+While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
+And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
+And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the
+	breath of my infant,
+There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;
+The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,
+The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the
+	irregular snap! snap!
+I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t!
+	of the rifle-balls,
+I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the
+	great shells shrieking as they pass,
+The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,
+	(tumultuous now the contest rages,)
+All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,
+The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,
+The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of
+	the right time,
+After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the effect;
+Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel
+	leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)
+I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay,)
+I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low
+	concealing all;
+Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side,
+Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and
+	orders of officers,
+While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears
+	a shout of applause, (some special success,)
+And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in
+	dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the
+	depths of my soul,)
+And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,
+	cavalry, moving hither and thither,
+(The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red
+	heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)
+Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full run,
+With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles,
+	(these in my vision I hear or see,)
+And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.
+
+
+
+
+Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
+
+Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,
+With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?
+Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?
+
+(’Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,
+Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,
+As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)
+
+Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder’d,
+A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,
+Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.
+
+No further does she say, but lingering all the day,
+Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,
+And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.
+
+What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
+Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?
+Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?
+
+
+
+
+Not Youth Pertains to Me
+
+Not youth pertains to me,
+Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,
+Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,
+In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning
+	inures not to me,
+Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me--yet there are two or three things
+	inure to me,
+I have nourish’d the wounded and sooth’d many a dying soldier,
+And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,
+Composed these songs.
+
+
+
+
+Race of Veterans
+
+Race of veterans--race of victors!
+Race of the soil, ready for conflict--race of the conquering march!
+(No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,)
+Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,
+Race of passion and the storm.
+
+
+
+
+World Take Good Notice
+
+World take good notice, silver stars fading,
+Milky hue ript, wet of white detaching,
+Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,
+Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,
+Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.
+
+
+
+
+O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
+
+O tan-faced prairie-boy,
+Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
+Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among
+	the recruits,
+You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but look’d on each other,
+When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.
+
+
+
+
+Look Down Fair Moon
+
+Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
+Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple,
+On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,
+Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.
+
+
+
+
+Reconciliation
+
+Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
+Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be
+	utterly lost,
+That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly
+	wash again, and ever again, this solid world;
+For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
+I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
+Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
+
+
+
+
+How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]
+
+How solemn as one by one,
+As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where stand,
+As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the masks,
+(As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,
+	whoever you are,)
+How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks,
+	and to you,
+I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,
+O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
+Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
+The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
+Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
+Nor the bayonet stab O friend.
+
+
+
+
+As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
+
+As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,
+The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air
+	I resume,
+I know I am restless and make others so,
+I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
+For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to
+	unsettle them,
+I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have
+	been had all accepted me,
+I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,
+	majorities, nor ridicule,
+And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,
+And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
+Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still
+	urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
+Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.
+
+
+
+
+Delicate Cluster
+
+Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
+Covering all my lands--all my seashores lining!
+Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing!
+How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
+Flag cerulean--sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!
+Ah my silvery beauty--ah my woolly white and crimson!
+Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
+My sacred one, my mother.
+
+
+
+
+To a Certain Civilian
+
+Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
+Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?
+Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?
+Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand--nor
+	am I now;
+(I have been born of the same as the war was born,
+The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the
+	martial dirge,
+With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s funeral;)
+What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,
+And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,
+For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.
+
+
+
+
+Lo, Victress on the Peaks
+
+Lo, Victress on the peaks,
+Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,
+(The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)
+Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all,
+Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
+Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom--lo, in
+	these hours supreme,
+No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous verse,
+But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping wounds,
+And psalms of the dead.
+
+
+
+
+Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]
+
+Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!
+Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
+Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering
+	pressing,)
+Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene--electric spirit,
+That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a
+	tireless phantom flitted,
+Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum,
+Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,
+	reverberates round me,
+As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,
+As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,
+As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,
+As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the
+	distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,
+Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left,
+Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;
+Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day,
+Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,
+Leave me your pulses of rage--bequeath them to me--fill me with
+	currents convulsive,
+Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,
+Let them identify you to the future in these songs.
+
+
+
+
+Adieu to a Soldier
+
+Adieu O soldier,
+You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
+The rapid march, the life of the camp,
+The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manœuvre,
+Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game,
+Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you
+	and like of you all fill’d,
+With war and war’s expression.
+
+Adieu dear comrade,
+Your mission is fulfill’d--but I, more warlike,
+Myself and this contentious soul of mine,
+Still on our own campaigning bound,
+Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,
+Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,
+Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,
+To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
+
+
+
+
+Turn O Libertad
+
+Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,
+From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute,
+	sweeping the world,
+Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,
+From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,
+From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste,
+Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come--give up that
+	backward world,
+Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,
+But what remains remains for singers for you--wars to come are for you,
+(Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars
+	of the present also inure;)
+Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad--turn your undying face,
+To where the future, greater than all the past,
+Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.
+
+
+
+
+To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod
+
+To the leaven’d soil they trod calling I sing for the last,
+(Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,)
+In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits
+	and vistas again to peace restored,
+To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the
+	South and the North,
+To the leaven’d soil of the general Western world to attest my songs,
+To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,
+To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,
+To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide,
+To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air;
+And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)
+The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely,
+The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son,
+The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end,
+But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
+
+When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
+And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
+I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
+
+Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
+Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
+And thought of him I love.
+
+O powerful western fallen star!
+O shades of night--O moody, tearful night!
+O great star disappear’d--O the black murk that hides the star!
+O cruel hands that hold me powerless--O helpless soul of me!
+O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
+
+
+In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
+Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
+With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
+With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the dooryard,
+With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
+A sprig with its flower I break.
+
+In the swamp in secluded recesses,
+A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
+
+Solitary the thrush,
+The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
+Sings by himself a song.
+
+Song of the bleeding throat,
+Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
+If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.)
+
+Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
+Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d
+	from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
+Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
+	endless grass,
+Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
+	dark-brown fields uprisen,
+Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
+Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
+Night and day journeys a coffin.
+
+Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
+Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
+With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
+With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
+With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
+With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
+	unbared heads,
+With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
+With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
+	and solemn,
+With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
+The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--where amid these
+	you journey,
+With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
+Here, coffin that slowly passes,
+I give you my sprig of lilac.
+
+(Nor for you, for one alone,
+Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
+For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane
+	and sacred death.
+
+All over bouquets of roses,
+O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
+But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
+Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
+With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
+For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
+
+O western orb sailing the heaven,
+Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,
+As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
+As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
+As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the
+	other stars all look’d on,)
+As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not
+	what kept me from sleep,)
+As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you
+	were of woe,
+As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
+As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black
+	of the night,
+As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
+Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
+
+Sing on there in the swamp,
+O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
+I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
+But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,
+The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
+
+O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
+And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
+And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
+
+Sea-winds blown from east and west,
+Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
+	there on the prairies meeting,
+These and with these and the breath of my chant,
+I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
+
+O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
+And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
+To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
+Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
+With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
+With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking
+	sun, burning, expanding the air,
+With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
+	of the trees prolific,
+In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
+	wind-dapple here and there,
+With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
+	and shadows,
+And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
+And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
+	homeward returning.
+
+Lo, body and soul--this land,
+My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
+	and the ships,
+The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
+	Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,
+And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
+
+Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
+The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
+The gentle soft-born measureless light,
+The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
+The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
+Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
+
+Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
+Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
+Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
+
+Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
+Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
+
+O liquid and free and tender!
+O wild and loose to my soul--O wondrous singer!
+You only I hear--yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
+Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
+
+Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,
+In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
+	the farmers preparing their crops,
+In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
+In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
+Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
+	voices of children and women,
+The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
+And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
+	with labor,
+And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with
+	its meals and minutia of daily usages,
+And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent--
+	lo, then and there,
+Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
+Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
+And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
+
+Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
+And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
+And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of
+	companions,
+I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
+Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
+To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
+
+And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,
+The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,
+And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
+
+From deep secluded recesses,
+From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
+Came the carol of the bird.
+
+And the charm of the carol rapt me,
+As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
+And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
+
+Come lovely and soothing death,
+Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
+In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
+Sooner or later delicate death.
+
+Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
+For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
+And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!
+For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
+
+Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
+Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
+Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
+I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
+
+Approach strong deliveress,
+When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
+Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
+Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
+
+From me to thee glad serenades,
+Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
+And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread shy are fitting,
+And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
+
+The night in silence under many a star,
+The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
+And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
+And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
+
+Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
+Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
+	prairies wide,
+Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
+I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
+
+To the tally of my soul,
+Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
+With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
+
+Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
+Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
+And I with my comrades there in the night.
+
+While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
+As to long panoramas of visions.
+
+And I saw askant the armies,
+I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
+Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
+And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
+And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
+And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
+
+I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
+And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
+I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
+But I saw they were not as was thought,
+They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
+The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
+And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
+And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
+
+Passing the visions, passing the night,
+Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
+Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
+Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
+As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,
+	flooding the night,
+Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
+	bursting with joy,
+Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
+As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
+Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
+I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
+
+I cease from my song for thee,
+From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
+O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
+
+Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
+The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
+And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
+With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
+With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
+Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for
+	the dead I loved so well,
+For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and this for
+	his dear sake,
+Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
+There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
+
+
+
+
+O Captain! My Captain!
+
+O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
+The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
+The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
+While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
+	But O heart! heart! heart!
+	O the bleeding drops of red,
+	Where on the deck my Captain lies,
+	Fallen cold and dead.
+
+O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
+Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
+For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
+For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
+	Here Captain! dear father!
+	This arm beneath your head!
+	It is some dream that on the deck,
+	You’ve fallen cold and dead.
+
+My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
+My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
+The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
+From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
+	Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
+	But I with mournful tread,
+	Walk the deck my Captain lies,
+	Fallen cold and dead.
+
+
+
+
+Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
+
+Hush’d be the camps to-day,
+And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
+And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
+Our dear commander’s death.
+
+No more for him life’s stormy conflicts,
+Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time’s dark events,
+Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.
+But sing poet in our name,
+
+Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.
+
+As they invault the coffin there,
+Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,
+For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+This Dust Was Once the Man
+
+This dust was once the man,
+Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
+Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
+Was saved the Union of these States.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+By Blue Ontario’s Shore
+
+By blue Ontario’s shore,
+As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the
+	dead that return no more,
+A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,
+Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,
+	chant me the carol of victory,
+And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,
+And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.
+
+(Democracy, the destin’d conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,
+And death and infidelity at every step.)
+
+A Nation announcing itself,
+I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
+I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.
+
+A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,
+What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,
+We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
+We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
+We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of
+	ourselves,
+We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,
+We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world,
+From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.
+
+Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
+Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or
+	sinful in ourselves only.
+
+(O Mother--O Sisters dear!
+If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us,
+It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)
+
+Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
+There can be any number of supremes--one does not countervail
+	another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or
+	one life countervails another.
+
+All is eligible to all,
+All is for individuals, all is for you,
+No condition is prohibited, not God’s or any.
+
+All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.
+
+Produce great Persons, the rest follows.
+
+Piety and conformity to them that like,
+Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
+I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,
+Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!
+
+I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every
+	one I meet,
+Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
+Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?
+
+(With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,
+These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)
+
+O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?
+If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.
+
+Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,
+Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey--juice,
+Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,
+Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.
+
+Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
+America brings builders, and brings its own styles.
+
+The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and
+	pass’d to other spheres,
+A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.
+
+America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all
+	hazards,
+Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use
+	of precedents,
+Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under
+	their forms,
+Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne
+	from the house,
+Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was
+	fittest for its days,
+That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who
+	approaches,
+And that he shall be fittest for his days.
+
+Any period one nation must lead,
+One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.
+
+These States are the amplest poem,
+Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,
+Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the
+	day and night,
+Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,
+Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
+Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the
+	soul loves.
+
+Land of lands and bards to corroborate!
+Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face,
+To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d both mother’s and father’s,
+His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,
+Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,
+Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,
+Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with
+	incomparable love,
+Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,
+Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,
+Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
+Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia,
+	Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,
+If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he
+	stretching with them North or South,
+Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them,
+Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock,
+	live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia,
+Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp,
+He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with
+	northern transparent ice,
+Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,
+Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the
+	fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,
+His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil,
+Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,
+Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
+Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,
+The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of
+	the Constitution,
+The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,
+The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,
+The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals,
+	hunters, trappers,
+Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the
+	gestation of new States,
+Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming
+	up from the uttermost parts,
+Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially
+	the young men,
+Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they
+	have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the
+	presence of superiors,
+The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and
+	decision of their phrenology,
+The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong’d,
+The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity,
+	good temper and open-handedness, the whole composite make,
+The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,
+The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement
+	of the population,
+The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
+Wharf-hemm’d cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points,
+Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the Northeast,
+	Northwest, Southwest,
+Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,
+Slavery--the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the
+	ruins of all the rest,
+On and on to the grapple with it--Assassin! then your life or ours
+	be the stake, and respite no more.
+
+(Lo, high toward heaven, this day,
+Libertad, from the conqueress’ field return’d,
+I mark the new aureola around your head,
+No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
+With war’s flames and the lambent lightnings playing,
+And your port immovable where you stand,
+With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch’d and lifted fist,
+And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly
+	crush’d beneath you,
+The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his
+	senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,
+The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much,
+To-day a carrion dead and damn’d, the despised of all the earth,
+An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn’d.)
+
+Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and ever
+	keeps vista,
+Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn you,
+O days of the future I believe in you--I isolate myself for your sake,
+O America because you build for mankind I build for you,
+O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision
+	and science,
+Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.
+(Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!
+But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,
+	pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)
+
+I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore,
+I heard the voice arising demanding bards,
+By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be
+	fused into the compact organism of a Nation.
+
+To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
+That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle,
+	as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.
+
+Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most
+	need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest,
+Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their
+	poets shall.
+
+(Soul of love and tongue of fire!
+Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
+Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)
+
+Of these States the poet is the equable man,
+Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
+	their full returns,
+Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
+He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither
+	more nor less,
+He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
+He is the equalizer of his age and land,
+He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
+In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,
+	thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,
+	commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,
+	immortality, government,
+In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as
+	good as the engineer’s, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
+The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
+He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,)
+He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round
+	helpless thing,
+As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
+His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
+In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
+He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
+He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women
+	as dreams or dots.
+
+For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
+For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
+The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.
+
+Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
+They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
+(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always
+	ready to fall for Liberty.)
+
+For the great Idea,
+That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.
+
+Songs of stern defiance ever ready,
+Songs of the rapid arming and the march,
+The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,
+Warlike flag of the great Idea.
+
+(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
+I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,
+I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight--O the
+	hard-contested fight!
+The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles--the hurtled balls scream,
+The battle-front forms amid the smoke--the volleys pour incessant
+	from the line,
+Hark, the ringing word Charge!--now the tussle and the furious
+	maddening yells,
+Now the corpses tumble curl’d upon the ground,
+Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,
+Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)
+
+Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in
+	the States?
+The place is august, the terms obdurate.
+
+Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind,
+He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself,
+He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and stern questions.
+
+Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?
+Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?
+Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,
+	pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and objects?
+Have you consider’d the organic compact of the first day of the
+	first year of Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners, ratified
+	by the States, and read by Washington at the head of the army?
+Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution?
+Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them,
+	and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
+Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the
+	bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
+Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
+Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,
+	fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the
+	whole People?
+Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?
+Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
+	life itself?
+Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
+Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
+Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the
+	last-born? little and big? and for the errant?
+
+What is this you bring my America?
+Is it uniform with my country?
+Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
+Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
+Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?--Is the good old cause in it?
+Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
+	literats, of enemies’ lands?
+Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
+Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
+Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union in
+	that secession war?
+Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
+Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
+	strength, gait, face?
+Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere
+	amanuenses?
+Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?
+What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago,
+	Kanada, Arkansas?
+Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians
+	standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, Western
+	men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the
+	promptness of their love?
+Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen,
+	each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist,
+	infidel, who has ever ask’d any thing of America?
+What mocking and scornful negligence?
+The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons,
+By the roadside others disdainfully toss’d.
+
+Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill’d from poems pass away,
+The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
+Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature,
+America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it
+	or conceal from it, it is impassive enough,
+Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,
+If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there
+	is no fear of mistake,
+(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr’d till his country
+	absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb’d it.)
+
+He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results
+	sweetest in the long run,
+The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;
+In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-opera,
+	shipcraft, any craft,
+He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original
+	practical example.
+
+Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets,
+People’s lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers,
+There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is done,
+Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,
+Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb,
+Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power;
+How dare you place any thing before a man?
+
+Fall behind me States!
+A man before all--myself, typical, before all.
+
+Give me the pay I have served for,
+Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
+I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
+I have given aims to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid
+	and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,
+Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence
+	toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
+Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,
+	and with the mothers of families,
+Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,
+	stars, rivers,
+Dismiss’d whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
+Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for
+	others on the same terms,
+Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State,
+(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean’d to breathe his last,
+This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish’d, rais’d, restored,
+To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
+I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,
+Rejecting none, permitting all.
+
+(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?
+Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)
+
+I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
+It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
+It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one,
+It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,
+Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.
+
+Underneath all, individuals,
+I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,
+The American compact is altogether with individuals,
+The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,
+The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one
+	single individual--namely to You.
+
+(Mother! with subtle sense severe, with the naked sword in your hand,
+I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.)
+
+Underneath all, Nativity,
+I swear I will stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it;
+I swear I am charm’d with nothing except nativity,
+Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.
+
+Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women,
+(I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of expressing
+	love for men and women,
+After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men and
+	women.) in myself,
+
+I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself,
+(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor
+	the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States.)
+
+Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments,
+	ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
+Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (the same
+	monotonous old song.)
+
+O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,
+Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,
+Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,
+Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships,
+	are you and me,
+Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,
+The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth
+	forget), was you and me,
+Natural and artificial are you and me,
+Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,
+Past, present, future, are you and me.
+
+I dare not shirk any part of myself,
+Not any part of America good or bad,
+Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
+Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
+Not to justify science nor the march of equality,
+Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov’d of time.
+
+I am for those that have never been master’d,
+For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,
+For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
+
+I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
+Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.
+
+I will not be outfaced by irrational things,
+I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
+I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,
+This is what I have learnt from America--it is the amount, and it I
+	teach again.
+
+(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast,
+I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams
+	your dilating form,
+Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)
+
+I will confront these shows of the day and night,
+I will know if I am to be less than they,
+I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
+I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
+I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
+I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning,
+I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves,
+	and I am not to be enough for myself.
+
+I match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes,
+Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself,
+America isolated yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?
+These States, what are they except myself?
+
+I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake,
+I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.
+
+
+(Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,
+I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,
+I know not fruition’s success, but I know that through war and crime
+	your work goes on, and must yet go on.)
+
+Thus by blue Ontario’s shore,
+While the winds fann’d me and the waves came trooping toward me,
+I thrill’d with the power’s pulsations, and the charm of my theme
+	was upon me,
+Till the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me.
+
+And I saw the free souls of poets,
+The loftiest bards of past ages strode before me,
+Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me.
+
+O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!
+Not for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch’d
+	you forth,
+Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario’s shores,
+Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage song.
+
+Bards for my own land only I invoke,
+(For the war the war is over, the field is clear’d,)
+Till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward,
+To cheer O Mother your boundless expectant soul.
+
+Bards of the great Idea! bards of the peaceful inventions! (for the
+	war, the war is over!)
+Yet bards of latent armies, a million soldiers waiting ever-ready,
+Bards with songs as from burning coals or the lightning’s fork’d stripes!
+Ample Ohio’s, Kanada’s bards--bards of California! inland bards--
+	bards of the war!
+You by my charm I invoke.
+
+
+
+
+Reversals
+
+Let that which stood in front go behind,
+Let that which was behind advance to the front,
+Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions,
+Let the old propositions be postponed,
+Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself,
+Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself
+
+
+
+
+
+
+As Consequent, Etc.
+
+As consequent from store of summer rains,
+Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,
+Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations,
+Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,
+Songs of continued years I sing.
+
+Life’s ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend,
+With the old streams of death.)
+
+Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods,
+Some down Colorado’s canons from sources of perpetual snow,
+Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,
+Some in the north finding their way to Erie, Niagara, Ottawa,
+Some to Atlantica’s bays, and so to the great salt brine.
+
+In you whoe’er you are my book perusing,
+In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing,
+All, all toward the mystic ocean tending.
+
+Currents for starting a continent new,
+Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,
+Fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves,
+(Not safe and peaceful only, waves rous’d and ominous too,
+Out of the depths the storm’s abysmic waves, who knows whence?
+Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter’d sail.)
+
+Or from the sea of Time, collecting vasting all, I bring,
+A windrow-drift of weeds and shells.
+
+O little shells, so curious-convolute, so limpid-cold and voiceless,
+Will you not little shells to the tympans of temples held,
+Murmurs and echoes still call up, eternity’s music faint and far,
+Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim, strains for the soul of
+	the prairies,
+Whisper’d reverberations, chords for the ear of the West joyously sounding,
+Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable,
+Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life,
+(For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give,)
+These waifs from the deep, cast high and dry,
+Wash’d on America’s shores?
+
+
+
+
+The Return of the Heroes
+
+For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself,
+Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,
+Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
+Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
+Turning a verse for thee.
+
+O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,
+O harvest of my lands--O boundless summer growths,
+O lavish brown parturient earth--O infinite teeming womb,
+A song to narrate thee.
+
+Ever upon this stage,
+Is acted God’s calm annual drama,
+Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
+Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
+The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
+The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
+The liliput countless armies of the grass,
+The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
+The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,
+The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the
+	silvery fringes,
+The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,
+The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
+The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.
+
+Fecund America--today,
+Thou art all over set in births and joys!
+Thou groan’st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-garment,
+Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,
+A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne,
+As some huge ship freighted to water’s edge thou ridest into port,
+As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so have
+	the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of thee;
+Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
+Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,
+Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,
+Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon
+	thy world, and lookest East and lookest West,
+Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million
+	farms, and missest nothing,
+Thou all-acceptress--thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as
+	God is hospitable.)
+
+When late I sang sad was my voice,
+Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and
+	smoke of war;
+In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,
+Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying.
+
+But now I sing not war,
+Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
+Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle;
+No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.
+
+Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies?
+Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow’d.
+
+(Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs,
+With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets;
+How elate I stood and watch’d you, where starting off you march’d.
+
+Pass--then rattle drums again,
+For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
+Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,
+O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever,
+O my land’s maim’d darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and
+	the crutch,
+Lo, your pallid army follows.)
+
+But on these days of brightness,
+On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes the
+	high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
+Should the dead intrude?
+
+Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,
+They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,
+And along the edge of the sky in the horizon’s far margin.
+
+Nor do I forget you Departed,
+Nor in winter or summer my lost ones,
+But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace,
+	like pleasing phantoms,
+Your memories rising glide silently by me.
+
+I saw the day the return of the heroes,
+(Yet the heroes never surpass’d shall never return,
+Them that day I saw not.)
+
+I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,
+I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,
+Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of
+	mighty camps.
+
+No holiday soldiers--youthful, yet veterans,
+Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
+Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
+Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field.
+
+A pause--the armies wait,
+A million flush’d embattled conquerors wait,
+The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn,
+They melt, they disappear.
+
+Exult O lands! victorious lands!
+Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields,
+But here and hence your victory.
+
+Melt, melt away ye armies--disperse ye blue-clad soldiers,
+Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,
+Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North,
+With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.
+
+Loud O my throat, and clear O soul!
+The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding,
+The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.
+
+All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me,
+I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last,
+Man’s innocent and strong arenas.
+
+I see the heroes at other toils,
+I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.
+
+I see where the Mother of All,
+With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long,
+And counts the varied gathering of the products.
+
+Busy the far, the sunlit panorama,
+Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
+Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane,
+Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
+Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
+And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,
+And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,
+And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass.
+
+Toil on heroes! harvest the products!
+Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All,
+With dilated form and lambent eyes watch’d you.
+
+Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well!
+The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.
+
+Well-pleased America thou beholdest,
+Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters,
+The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements;
+Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the
+	revolving hay-rakes,
+The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines
+The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well
+	separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,
+Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the
+	rice-cleanser.
+
+Beneath thy look O Maternal,
+With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest.
+
+All gather and all harvest,
+Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security,
+Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.
+
+Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great
+	face only,
+Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spear
+	under thee,
+Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in its
+	light-green sheath,
+Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,
+Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
+Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the
+	golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
+Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
+Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the Borders,
+Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches
+	of grapes from the vines,
+Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,
+Under the beaming sun and under thee.
+
+
+
+
+There Was a Child Went Forth
+
+There was a child went forth every day,
+And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
+And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
+Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
+
+The early lilacs became part of this child,
+And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red
+	clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
+And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the
+	mare’s foal and the cow’s calf,
+And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,
+And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the
+	beautiful curious liquid,
+And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.
+
+The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,
+Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the
+	esculent roots of the garden,
+And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms and the fruit afterward,
+	and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,
+And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the
+	tavern whence he had lately risen,
+And the schoolmistress that pass’d on her way to the school,
+And the friendly boys that pass’d, and the quarrelsome boys,
+And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
+And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.
+
+His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had conceiv’d
+	him in her womb and birth’d him,
+They gave this child more of themselves than that,
+They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.
+
+The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
+The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome
+	odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,
+The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust,
+The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
+The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the
+	yearning and swelling heart,
+Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the
+	thought if after all it should prove unreal,
+The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious
+	whether and how,
+Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
+Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes
+	and specks what are they?
+The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,
+Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves, the huge crossing at
+	the ferries,
+The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,
+Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of
+	white or brown two miles off,
+The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little
+	boat slack-tow’d astern,
+The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
+The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away
+	solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
+The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh
+	and shore mud,
+These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
+	now goes, and will always go forth every day.
+
+
+
+
+Old Ireland
+
+Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
+Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
+Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground,
+Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders,
+At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
+Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
+Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
+
+Yet a word ancient mother,
+You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead
+	between your knees,
+O you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair so dishevel’d,
+For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
+It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,
+The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country,
+Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
+What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave,
+The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it,
+And now with rosy and new blood,
+Moves to-day in a new country.
+
+
+
+
+The City Dead-House
+
+By the city dead-house by the gate,
+As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,
+I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought,
+Her corpse they deposit unclaim’d, it lies on the damp brick pavement,
+The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it alone,
+That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice not,
+Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odors
+	morbific impress me,
+But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house
+	--that ruin!
+That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever built!
+Or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted, or all the
+	old high-spired cathedrals,
+That little house alone more than them all--poor, desperate house!
+Fair, fearful wreck--tenement of a soul--itself a soul,
+Unclaim’d, avoided house--take one breath from my tremulous lips,
+Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,
+Dead house of love--house of madness and sin, crumbled, crush’d,
+House of life, erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house,
+	dead even then,
+Months, years, an echoing, garnish’d house--but dead, dead, dead.
+
+
+
+
+This Compost
+
+Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
+I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
+I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
+I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
+I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.
+
+O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
+How can you be alive you growths of spring?
+How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
+Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
+Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?
+
+Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
+Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
+Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
+I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d,
+I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
+	the sod and turn it up underneath,
+I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
+
+Behold this compost! behold it well!
+Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person--yet behold!
+The grass of spring covers the prairies,
+The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
+The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
+The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
+The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
+The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
+The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
+	their nests,
+The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
+The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
+	colt from the mare,
+Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
+Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
+	the dooryards,
+The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
+	of sour dead.
+
+What chemistry!
+That the winds are really not infectious,
+That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
+	is so amorous after me,
+That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
+That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
+	themselves in it,
+That all is clean forever and forever,
+That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
+That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
+That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
+	melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
+That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
+Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
+	catching disease.
+
+Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
+It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
+It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
+	successions of diseas’d corpses,
+It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
+It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
+It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
+	from them at last.
+
+
+
+
+To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire
+
+Courage yet, my brother or my sister!
+Keep on--Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;
+That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any
+	number of failures,
+Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
+	unfaithfulness,
+Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.
+
+What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,
+Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is
+	positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
+Waiting patiently, waiting its time.
+
+(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
+But songs of insurrection also,
+For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,
+And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
+And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)
+
+The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,
+The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
+The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and
+	leadballs do their work,
+The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
+The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,
+The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,
+The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;
+But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the
+	infidel enter’d into full possession.
+
+When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the
+	second or third to go,
+It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.
+
+When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
+And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged
+	from any part of the earth,
+Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from
+	that part of the earth,
+And the infidel come into full possession.
+
+Then courage European revolter, revoltress!
+For till all ceases neither must you cease.
+
+I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself,
+	nor what any thing is for,)
+But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,
+In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment--for they too are great.
+
+Did we think victory great?
+So it is--but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that
+	defeat is great,
+And that death and dismay are great.
+
+
+
+
+Unnamed Land
+
+Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten
+	thousand years before these States,
+Garner’d clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and
+	travel’d their course and pass’d on,
+What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes
+	and nomads,
+What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,
+What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,
+What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,
+What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death
+	and the soul,
+Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and
+	undevelop’d,
+Not a mark, not a record remains--and yet all remains.
+
+O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more
+	than we are for nothing,
+I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much
+	as we now belong to it.
+
+Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
+Some with oval countenances learn’d and calm,
+Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,
+Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
+Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,
+	laboring, reaping, filling barns,
+Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,
+	libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
+Are those billions of men really gone?
+Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
+Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
+Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?
+
+I believe of all those men and women that fill’d the unnamed lands,
+	every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.
+In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of
+	what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn’d, in life.
+
+I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of
+	them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
+Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,
+	games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
+I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,
+	counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
+I suspect I shall meet them there,
+I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.
+
+
+
+
+Song of Prudence
+
+Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering,
+On Time, Space, Reality--on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence.
+
+The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence,
+Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that
+	suits immortality.
+
+The soul is of itself,
+All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,
+All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
+Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day,
+	month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death,
+But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the
+	indirect lifetime.
+
+The indirect is just as much as the direct,
+The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the
+	body, if not more.
+
+Not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of
+	the onanist,
+Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning,
+	betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,
+But has results beyond death as really as before death.
+
+Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing.
+
+No specification is necessary, all that a male or female does, that
+	is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her,
+In the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope
+	of it forever.
+
+Who has been wise receives interest,
+Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat,
+	young, old, it is the same,
+The interest will come round--all will come round.
+
+Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect,
+	all of the past and all of the present and all of the future,
+All the brave actions of war and peace,
+All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful,
+	young children, widows, the sick, and to shunn’d persons,
+All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw
+	others fill the seats of the boats,
+All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a
+	friend’s sake, or opinion’s sake,
+All pains of enthusiasts scoff’d at by their neighbors,
+All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,
+All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded,
+All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,
+All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name,
+	date, location,
+All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,
+All suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of his
+	mouth, or the shaping of his great hands,
+All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe,
+	or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix’d stars,
+	by those there as we are here,
+All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are,
+	or by any one,
+These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which
+	they sprang, or shall spring.
+
+Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?
+The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,
+No consummation exists without being from some long previous
+	consummation, and that from some other,
+Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the
+	beginning than any.
+
+Whatever satisfies souls is true;
+Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,
+Itself only finally satisfies the soul,
+The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson
+	but its own.
+
+Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time,
+	space, reality,
+That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.
+
+What is prudence is indivisible,
+Declines to separate one part of life from every part,
+Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead,
+Matches every thought or act by its correlative,
+Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,
+Knows that the young man who composedly peril’d his life and lost it
+	has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,
+That he who never peril’d his life, but retains it to old age in
+	riches and ease, has probably achiev’d nothing for himself worth
+	mentioning,
+Knows that only that person has really learn’d who has learn’d to
+	prefer results,
+Who favors body and soul the same,
+Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,
+Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor
+	avoids death.
+
+
+
+
+The Singer in the Prison
+
+	O sight of pity, shame and dole!
+	O fearful thought--a convict soul.
+
+Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,
+Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
+Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the
+	like whereof was never heard,
+Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas’d their pacing,
+Making the hearer’s pulses stop for ecstasy and awe.
+
+The sun was low in the west one winter day,
+When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,
+(There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters,
+Gather’d to Sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round,
+Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)
+Calmly a lady walk’d holding a little innocent child by either hand,
+Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform,
+She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude,
+In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.
+
+	A soul confined by bars and bands,
+	Cries, help! O help! and wrings her hands,
+	Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast,
+	Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.
+
+	Ceaseless she paces to and fro,
+	O heart-sick days! O nights of woe!
+	Nor hand of friend, nor loving face,
+	Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.
+
+	It was not I that sinn’d the sin,
+	The ruthless body dragg’d me in;
+	Though long I strove courageously,
+	The body was too much for me.
+
+	Dear prison’d soul bear up a space,
+	For soon or late the certain grace;
+	To set thee free and bear thee home,
+	The heavenly pardoner death shall come.
+
+	Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole!
+	Depart--a God-enfranchis’d soul!
+
+The singer ceas’d,
+One glance swept from her clear calm eyes o’er all those upturn’d faces,
+Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal,
+	seam’d and beauteous faces,
+Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,
+While her gown touch’d them rustling in the silence,
+She vanish’d with her children in the dusk.
+
+While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr’d,
+(Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)
+A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute,
+With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow’d and moved to weeping,
+And youth’s convulsive breathings, memories of home,
+The mother’s voice in lullaby, the sister’s care, the happy childhood,
+The long-pent spirit rous’d to reminiscence;
+A wondrous minute then--but after in the solitary night, to many,
+	many there,
+Years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune,
+	the voice, the words,
+Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle,
+The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings,
+
+	O sight of pity, shame and dole!
+	O fearful thought--a convict soul.
+
+
+
+
+Warble for Lilac-Time
+
+Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)
+Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature’s sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,
+Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)
+Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,
+Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
+Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his
+	golden wings,
+The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
+Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,
+All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,
+The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,
+The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
+With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
+Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest
+	of his mate,
+The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,
+For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it
+	and from it?
+Thou, soul, unloosen’d--the restlessness after I know not what;
+Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
+O if one could but fly like a bird!
+O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!
+To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters;
+Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the
+	morning drops of dew,
+The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,
+Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,
+Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
+To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds,
+A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.
+
+
+
+
+Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]
+
+What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
+What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?
+The life thou lived’st we know not,
+But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of
+	brokers,
+Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.
+
+Silent, my soul,
+With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d,
+Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.
+
+While through the interior vistas,
+Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)
+Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes,
+Spiritual projections.
+
+In one, among the city streets a laborer’s home appear’d,
+After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,
+The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove.
+
+In one, the sacred parturition scene,
+A happy painless mother birth’d a perfect child.
+
+In one, at a bounteous morning meal,
+Sat peaceful parents with contented sons.
+
+In one, by twos and threes, young people,
+Hundreds concentring, walk’d the paths and streets and roads,
+Toward a tall-domed school.
+
+In one a trio beautiful,
+Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter’s daughter, sat,
+Chatting and sewing.
+
+In one, along a suite of noble rooms,
+’Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,
+Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old,
+Reading, conversing.
+
+All, all the shows of laboring life,
+City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s,
+Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy,
+Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room,
+Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college,
+The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught,
+The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father’d and mother’d,
+The hungry fed, the houseless housed;
+(The intentions perfect and divine,
+The workings, details, haply human.)
+
+O thou within this tomb,
+From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,
+Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,
+Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.
+
+Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,
+By you, your banks Connecticut,
+By you and all your teeming life old Thames,
+By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco,
+You Hudson, you endless Mississippi--nor you alone,
+But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.
+
+
+
+
+Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
+
+Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,
+These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,
+This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for
+	you, in each for each,
+(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears--0 heaven!
+The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)
+This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,
+This film of Satan’s seething pit,
+This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this
+	soundless sea;
+Out from the convolutions of this globe,
+This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,
+This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,
+Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)
+These burin’d eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,
+To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate,
+To you whoe’er you are--a look.
+
+A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,
+Of youth long sped and middle age declining,
+(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,
+Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)
+Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,
+As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open’d window,
+Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,
+To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,
+Then travel travel on.
+
+
+
+
+Vocalism
+
+Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine
+	power to speak words;
+Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous
+	practice? from physique?
+Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?
+Come duly to the divine power to speak words?
+For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
+	procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
+After treading ground and breasting river and lake,
+After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
+	after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
+After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing
+	obstructions,
+After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,
+	woman, the divine power to speak words;
+Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all--none
+	refuse, all attend,
+Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities,
+	hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in
+	close ranks,
+They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the
+	mouth of that man or that woman.
+
+O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
+Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
+As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere
+	around the globe.
+
+All waits for the right voices;
+Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? where is the develop’d soul?
+For I see every word utter’d thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
+	impossible on less terms.
+
+I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,
+Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,
+Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies
+	slumbering forever ready in all words.
+
+
+
+
+To Him That Was Crucified
+
+My spirit to yours dear brother,
+Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you,
+I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
+I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute
+	those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,
+That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession,
+We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,
+We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies,
+Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
+We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the
+	disputers nor any thing that is asserted,
+We hear the bawling and din, we are reach’d at by divisions,
+	jealousies, recriminations on every side,
+They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,
+Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and
+	down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,
+Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races,
+	ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.
+
+
+
+
+You Felons on Trial in Courts
+
+You felons on trial in courts,
+You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and
+	handcuff’d with iron,
+Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
+Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with
+	iron, or my ankles with iron?
+
+You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms,
+Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?
+
+O culpable! I acknowledge--I expose!
+(O admirers, praise not me--compliment not me--you make me wince,
+I see what you do not--I know what you do not.)
+
+Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,
+Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run,
+Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
+I walk with delinquents with passionate love,
+I feel I am of them--I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
+And henceforth I will not deny them--for how can I deny myself?
+
+
+
+
+Laws for Creations
+
+Laws for creations,
+For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and
+	perfect literats for America,
+For noble savans and coming musicians.
+All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the
+	compact truth of the world,
+There shall be no subject too pronounced--all works shall illustrate
+	the divine law of indirections.
+
+What do you suppose creation is?
+What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and
+	own no superior?
+What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but
+	that man or woman is as good as God?
+And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?
+And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
+And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?
+
+
+
+
+To a Common Prostitute
+
+Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and
+	lusty as Nature,
+Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
+Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
+	rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
+
+My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you
+	make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
+And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.
+
+Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.
+
+
+
+
+I Was Looking a Long While
+
+I was looking a long while for Intentions,
+For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these
+	chants--and now I have found it,
+It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
+	accept nor reject,)
+It is no more in the legends than in all else,
+It is in the present--it is this earth to-day,
+It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,)
+It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of to-day,
+It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,
+It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,
+	politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
+All for the modern--all for the average man of to-day.
+
+
+
+
+Thought
+
+Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,
+	scholarships, and the like;
+(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them,
+	except as it results to their bodies and souls,
+So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,
+And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,
+And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the
+	rotten excrement of maggots,
+And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true
+	realities of life, and go toward false realities,
+And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them,
+	but nothing more,
+And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)
+
+
+
+
+Miracles
+
+Why, who makes much of a miracle?
+As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
+Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
+Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
+Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
+Or stand under trees in the woods,
+Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
+	with any one I love,
+Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
+Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
+Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
+Or animals feeding in the fields,
+Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
+Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
+	and bright,
+Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
+These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
+The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
+
+To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
+Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
+Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
+Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
+To me the sea is a continual miracle,
+The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the
+	ships with men in them,
+What stranger miracles are there?
+
+
+
+
+Sparkles from the Wheel
+
+Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,
+Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them.
+
+By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,
+A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,
+Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,
+With measur’d tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but
+	firm hand,
+Forth issue then in copious golden jets,
+Sparkles from the wheel.
+
+The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,
+The sad sharp-chinn’d old man with worn clothes and broad
+	shoulder-band of leather,
+Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here
+	absorb’d and arrested,
+The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)
+The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets,
+The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press’d blade,
+Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,
+Sparkles from the wheel.
+
+
+
+
+To a Pupil
+
+Is reform needed? is it through you?
+The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need
+	to accomplish it.
+
+You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
+	complexion, clean and sweet?
+Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that
+	when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command
+	enters with you, and every one is impress’d with your Personality?
+
+O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
+Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to
+	inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
+	elevatedness,
+Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality.
+
+
+
+
+Unfolded out of the Folds
+
+Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is
+	always to come unfolded,
+Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the
+	superbest man of the earth,
+Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,
+Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be
+	form’d of perfect body,
+Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the
+	poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)
+Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence
+	can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,
+Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman
+	love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,
+Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds
+	of the man’s brain, duly obedient,
+Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,
+Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;
+A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but
+	every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;
+First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.
+
+
+
+
+What Am I After All
+
+What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own
+	name? repeating it over and over;
+I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.
+
+To you your name also;
+Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
+	the sound of your name?
+
+
+
+
+Kosmos
+
+Who includes diversity and is Nature,
+Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of
+	the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also,
+Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing,
+	or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,
+Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,
+Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,
+	spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual,
+Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good,
+Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body
+	understands by subtle analogies all other theories,
+The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;
+Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in
+	other globes with their suns and moons,
+Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day
+	but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,
+The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.
+
+
+
+
+Others May Praise What They Like
+
+Others may praise what they like;
+But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art
+	or aught else,
+Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the
+	western prairie-scent,
+And exudes it all again.
+
+
+
+
+Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
+
+Who learns my lesson complete?
+Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
+The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,
+	clerk, porter and customer,
+Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy--draw nigh and commence;
+It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
+And that to another, and every one to another still.
+
+The great laws take and effuse without argument,
+I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
+I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.
+
+I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons
+	of things,
+They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
+
+I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--
+	it is very wonderful.
+
+It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so
+	exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or
+	the untruth of a single second,
+I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
+	nor ten billions of years,
+Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans
+	and builds a house.
+
+I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
+Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
+Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
+
+Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
+I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and
+	how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,
+And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of
+	summers and winters to articulate and walk--all this is
+	equally wonderful.
+
+And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
+	without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see
+	each other, is every bit as wonderful.
+
+And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
+And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to
+	be true, is just as wonderful.
+
+And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is
+	equally wonderful,
+And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
+	wonderful.
+
+
+
+
+Tests
+
+All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to
+	analysis in the soul,
+Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,
+They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,
+They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves,
+	and touches themselves;
+For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far
+	and near without one exception.
+
+
+
+
+The Torch
+
+On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen’s group
+	stands watching,
+Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon,
+The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,
+Bearing a torch ablaze at the prow.
+
+
+
+
+O Star of France [1870-71]
+
+O star of France,
+The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
+Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
+Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk,
+And ’mid its teeming madden’d half-drown’d crowds,
+Nor helm nor helmsman.
+
+Dim smitten star,
+Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,
+The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty,
+Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast’s dreams of brotherhood,
+Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.
+
+Star crucified--by traitors sold,
+Star panting o’er a land of death, heroic land,
+Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.
+
+Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee,
+Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell’d them all,
+And left thee sacred.
+
+In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly,
+In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price,
+In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg’d sleep,
+In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones
+	that shamed thee,
+In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains,
+This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,
+The spear thrust in thy side.
+
+O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!
+Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on!
+
+Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,
+Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,
+Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,
+Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,
+Onward beneath the sun following its course,
+So thee O ship of France!
+
+Finish’d the days, the clouds dispel’d
+The travail o’er, the long-sought extrication,
+When lo! reborn, high o’er the European world,
+(In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours
+	Columbia,)
+Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star,
+In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,
+Shall beam immortal.
+
+
+
+
+The Ox-Tamer
+
+In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region,
+Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen,
+There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to
+	break them,
+He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him,
+He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock
+	chafes up and down the yard,
+The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes,
+Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides--how soon this tamer tames him;
+See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old,
+	and he is the man who has tamed them,
+They all know him, all are affectionate to him;
+See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking;
+Some are buff-color’d, some mottled, one has a white line running
+	along his back, some are brindled,
+Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)--see you! the bright hides,
+See, the two with stars on their foreheads--see, the round bodies
+	and broad backs,
+How straight and square they stand on their legs--what fine sagacious eyes!
+How straight they watch their tamer--they wish him near them--how
+	they turn to look after him!
+What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them;
+Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics,
+	poems, depart--all else departs,)
+I confess I envy only his fascination--my silent, illiterate friend,
+Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,
+In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.
+
+
+
+
+An Old Man’s Thought of School
+[For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874]
+
+An old man’s thought of school,
+An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.
+
+Now only do I know you,
+O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass!
+
+And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
+These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
+Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
+Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
+On the soul’s voyage.
+
+Only a lot of boys and girls?
+Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
+Only a public school?
+
+Ah more, infinitely more;
+(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and
+	mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?
+Why this is not the church at all--the church is living, ever living
+	souls.”)
+
+And you America,
+Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
+The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
+To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.
+
+
+
+
+Wandering at Morn
+
+Wandering at morn,
+Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,
+Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine!
+Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay,
+	with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,
+This common marvel I beheld--the parent thrush I watch’d feeding its young,
+The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,
+Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.
+
+There ponder’d, felt I,
+If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn’d,
+If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be,
+Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;
+Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?
+From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,
+Destin’d to fill the world.
+
+
+
+
+Italian Music in Dakota
+[“The Seventeenth--the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.”]
+
+Through the soft evening air enwinding all,
+Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
+In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes,
+Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,
+(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
+Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,
+Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera house,
+Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
+Sonnambula’s innocent love, trios with Norma’s anguish,
+And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)
+Ray’d in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,
+Music, Italian music in Dakota.
+
+While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm,
+Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,
+Acknowledging rapport however far remov’d,
+(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
+Listens well pleas’d.
+
+
+
+
+With All Thy Gifts
+
+With all thy gifts America,
+Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,
+Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--with these and like of
+	these vouchsafed to thee,
+What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,)
+The gift of perfect women fit for thee--what if that gift of gifts
+	thou lackest?
+The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee?
+The mothers fit for thee?
+
+
+
+
+My Picture-Gallery
+
+In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house,
+It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;
+Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories!
+Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death;
+Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,
+With finger rais’d he points to the prodigal pictures.
+
+
+
+
+The Prairie States
+
+A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,
+Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
+With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
+By all the world contributed--freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,
+The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,
+To justify the past.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Proud Music of the Storm
+
+Proud music of the storm,
+Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies,
+Strong hum of forest tree-tops--wind of the mountains,
+Personified dim shapes--you hidden orchestras,
+You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert,
+Blending with Nature’s rhythmus all the tongues of nations;
+You chords left as by vast composers--you choruses,
+You formless, free, religious dances--you from the Orient,
+You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts,
+You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry,
+Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls,
+Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
+Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you seiz’d me?
+
+
+Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire,
+Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,
+Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
+For thee they sing and dance O soul.
+
+A festival song,
+The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,
+With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill’d to the brim with love,
+The red-flush’d cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of
+	friendly faces young and old,
+To flutes’ clear notes and sounding harps’ cantabile.
+
+Now loud approaching drums,
+Victoria! seest thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?
+	the rout of the baffled?
+Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?
+
+(Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony,
+The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken’d ruins, the embers of cities,
+The dirge and desolation of mankind.)
+
+Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me,
+I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals,
+I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love,
+I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.
+
+Now the great organ sounds,
+Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,
+On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,
+All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know,
+Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and
+	play, the clouds of heaven above,)
+The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,
+Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest,
+And with it every instrument in multitudes,
+The players playing, all the world’s musicians,
+The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,
+All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,
+The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,
+And for their solvent setting earth’s own diapason,
+Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,
+A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer,
+As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,
+The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,
+The journey done, the journeyman come home,
+And man and art with Nature fused again.
+
+Tutti! for earth and heaven;
+(The Almighty leader now for once has signal’d with his wand.)
+
+The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,
+And all the wives responding.
+
+The tongues of violins,
+(I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself,
+This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)
+
+Ah from a little child,
+Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music,
+My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn,
+(The voice, O tender voices, memory’s loving voices,
+Last miracle of all, O dearest mother’s, sister’s, voices;)
+The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn,
+The measur’d sea-surf beating on the sand,
+The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream,
+The wild-fowl’s notes at night as flying low migrating north or south,
+The psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the
+	open air camp-meeting,
+The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,
+The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn.
+
+All songs of current lands come sounding round me,
+The German airs of friendship, wine and love,
+Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles,
+Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, and o’er the rest,
+Italia’s peerless compositions.
+
+Across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion,
+Stalks Norma brandishing the dagger in her hand.
+
+I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam,
+Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel’d.
+
+I see where Ernani walking the bridal garden,
+Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand,
+Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn.
+
+To crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven,
+The clear electric base and baritone of the world,
+The trombone duo, Libertad forever!
+From Spanish chestnut trees’ dense shade,
+By old and heavy convent walls a wailing song,
+Song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench’d in despair,
+Song of the dying swan, Fernando’s heart is breaking.
+
+Awaking from her woes at last retriev’d Amina sings,
+Copious as stars and glad as morning light the torrents of her joy.
+
+(The teeming lady comes,
+The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
+Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.)
+
+I hear those odes, symphonies, operas,
+I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous’d and angry people,
+I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert,
+Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan.
+
+I hear the dance-music of all nations,
+The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss,
+The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets.
+
+I see religious dances old and new,
+I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre,
+I see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the
+	martial clang of cymbals,
+I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers’d with frantic
+	shouts, as they spin around turning always towards Mecca,
+I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs,
+Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing,
+I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies,
+I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet.
+
+I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers wounding
+	each other,
+I see the Roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets throwing and
+	catching their weapons,
+As they fall on their knees and rise again.
+
+I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling,
+I see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor word,
+But silent, strange, devout, rais’d, glowing heads, ecstatic faces.
+
+I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings,
+The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen,
+The sacred imperial hymns of China,
+To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,)
+Or to Hindu flutes and the fretting twang of the vina,
+A band of bayaderes.
+
+Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me,
+To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of voices,
+Luther’s strong hymn Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,
+Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa,
+Or floating in some high cathedral dim with gorgeous color’d windows,
+The passionate Agnus Dei or Gloria in Excelsis.
+
+Composers! mighty maestros!
+And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi!
+To you a new bard caroling in the West,
+Obeisant sends his love.
+
+(Such led to thee O soul,
+All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee,
+But now it seems to me sound leads o’er all the rest.)
+
+I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul’s cathedral,
+Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies,
+	oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn,
+The Creation in billows of godhood laves me.
+
+Give me to hold all sounds, (I madly struggling cry,)
+Fill me with all the voices of the universe,
+Endow me with their throbbings, Nature’s also,
+The tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and dances,
+Utter, pour in, for I would take them all!
+
+Then I woke softly,
+And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream,
+And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury,
+And all the songs of sopranos and tenors,
+And those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor,
+And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs,
+And all the artless plaints of love and grief and death,
+I said to my silent curious soul out of the bed of the slumber-chamber,
+Come, for I have found the clew I sought so long,
+Let us go forth refresh’d amid the day,
+Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,
+Nourish’d henceforth by our celestial dream.
+
+And I said, moreover,
+Haply what thou hast heard O soul was not the sound of winds,
+Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk’s flapping wings nor harsh scream,
+Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy,
+Nor German organ majestic, nor vast concourse of voices, nor layers
+	of harmonies,
+Nor strophes of husbands and wives, nor sound of marching soldiers,
+Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps,
+But to a new rhythmus fitted for thee,
+Poems bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night
+	air, uncaught, unwritten,
+Which let us go forth in the bold day and write.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Passage to India
+
+Singing my days,
+Singing the great achievements of the present,
+Singing the strong light works of engineers,
+Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
+In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
+The New by its mighty railroad spann’d,
+The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;
+Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,
+The Past! the Past! the Past!
+
+The Past--the dark unfathom’d retrospect!
+The teeming gulf--the sleepers and the shadows!
+The past--the infinite greatness of the past!
+For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
+(As a projectile form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on,
+So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)
+
+Passage O soul to India!
+Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.
+
+Not you alone proud truths of the world,
+Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,
+But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,
+The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams,
+The deep diving bibles and legends,
+The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;
+O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun!
+O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,
+	mounting to heaven!
+You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d
+	with gold!
+Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams!
+You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!
+You too with joy I sing.
+
+Passage to India!
+Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
+The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,
+The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
+The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
+The lands to be welded together.
+
+A worship new I sing,
+You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
+You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
+You, not for trade or transportation only,
+But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.
+
+Passage to India!
+Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,
+I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open’d,
+I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Engenie’s leading the van,
+I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level
+	sand in the distance,
+I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d,
+The gigantic dredging machines.
+
+In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)
+I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,
+I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying
+	freight and passengers,
+I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,
+I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,
+I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes,
+	the buttes,
+I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless,
+	sage-deserts,
+I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great
+	mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains,
+I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the
+	Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,
+I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,
+I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,
+I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
+Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold
+	enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,
+Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
+Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
+Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
+The road between Europe and Asia.
+
+(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!
+Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
+The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)
+
+Passage to India!
+Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
+Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,
+Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
+
+Along all history, down the slopes,
+As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,
+A ceaseless thought, a varied train--lo, soul, to thee, thy sight,
+	they rise,
+The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;
+Again Vasco de Gama sails forth,
+Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass,
+Lands found and nations born, thou born America,
+For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d,
+Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish’d.
+
+O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
+Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty,
+Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
+Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
+Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
+With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
+Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.
+
+Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
+Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
+Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
+With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
+With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and
+	Whither O mocking life?
+
+Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
+Who Justify these restless explorations?
+Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
+Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
+What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a
+	throb to answer ours,
+Cold earth, the place of graves.)
+
+Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
+Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
+
+After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
+After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
+After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the
+	geologist, ethnologist,
+Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
+The true son of God shall come singing his songs.
+
+Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors,
+	shall be justified,
+All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d,
+All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,
+All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and
+	link’d together,
+The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be
+	completely Justified,
+Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by
+	the true son of God, the poet,
+(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
+He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)
+Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
+The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.
+
+Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!
+Year of the purpose accomplish’d!
+Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!
+(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)
+I see O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all,
+Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World,
+The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,
+As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.
+
+Passage to India!
+Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,
+The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.
+
+Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,
+The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth’s lands,
+The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many affluents,
+(I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,)
+The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying,
+On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia,
+To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal,
+The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
+Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha,
+Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors,
+The wars of Tamerlane,the reign of Aurungzebe,
+The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the
+	Arabs, Portuguese,
+The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,
+Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d,
+The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest,
+Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.
+
+The mediaeval navigators rise before me,
+The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise,
+Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring,
+The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.
+
+And who art thou sad shade?
+Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,
+With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes,
+Spreading around with every look of thine a golden world,
+Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.
+
+As the chief histrion,
+Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,
+Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,
+(History’s type of courage, action, faith,)
+Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,
+His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,
+His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain’d,
+Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
+
+(Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes,
+Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?
+Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? lo, to God’s due
+	occasion,
+Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,
+And fills the earth with use and beauty.)
+
+Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,
+Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,
+The young maturity of brood and bloom,
+To realms of budding bibles.
+
+O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,
+Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,
+Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return,
+To reason’s early paradise,
+Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions,
+Again with fair creation.
+
+O we can wait no longer,
+We too take ship O soul,
+Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
+Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
+Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
+Caroling free, singing our song of God,
+Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.
+
+With laugh and many a kiss,
+(Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,)
+O soul thou pleasest me, I thee.
+
+Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,
+But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.
+
+O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
+Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,
+Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
+Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
+Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
+Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,
+I and my soul to range in range of thee.
+
+O Thou transcendent,
+Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
+Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,
+Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,
+Thou moral, spiritual fountain--affection’s source--thou reservoir,
+(O pensive soul of me--O thirst unsatisfied--waitest not there?
+Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)
+Thou pulse--thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,
+That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,
+Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,
+How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out
+	of myself,
+I could not launch, to those, superior universes?
+
+Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
+At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
+But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,
+And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
+Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
+And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.
+
+Greater than stars or suns,
+Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;
+What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?
+What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?
+What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?
+What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all?
+For others’ sake to suffer all?
+
+Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
+The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,
+Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,
+As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,
+The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.
+
+Passage to more than India!
+Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?
+O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?
+Disportest thou on waters such as those?
+Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?
+Then have thy bent unleash’d.
+
+Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!
+Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!
+You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.
+
+Passage to more than India!
+O secret of the earth and sky!
+Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!
+Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land!
+Of you O prairies! of you gray rocks!
+O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!
+O day and night, passage to you!
+
+
+O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!
+Passage to you!
+
+Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
+Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
+
+Cut the hawsers--haul out--shake out every sail!
+Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
+Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
+Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
+
+Sail forth--steer for the deep waters only,
+Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
+For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
+And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
+
+O my brave soul!
+O farther farther sail!
+O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
+O farther, farther, farther sail!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Prayer of Columbus
+
+A batter’d, wreck’d old man,
+Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
+Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
+Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death,
+I take my way along the island’s edge,
+Venting a heavy heart.
+
+I am too full of woe!
+Haply I may not live another day;
+I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,
+Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,
+Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,
+Report myself once more to Thee.
+
+Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
+My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;
+Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,
+Thou knowest my manhood’s solemn and visionary meditations,
+Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee,
+Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them,
+Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,
+In shackles, prison’d, in disgrace, repining not,
+Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.
+
+All my emprises have been fill’d with Thee,
+My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,
+Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee;
+Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee.
+
+O I am sure they really came from Thee,
+The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,
+The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,
+A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,
+These sped me on.
+
+By me and these the work so far accomplish’d,
+By me earth’s elder cloy’d and stifled lands uncloy’d, unloos’d,
+By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.
+
+The end I know not, it is all in Thee,
+Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what lands,
+Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know,
+Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,
+Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools,
+Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe’s dead cross, may bud and
+	blossom there.
+
+One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;
+That Thou O God my life hast lighted,
+With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,
+Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,
+Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;
+For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,
+Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.
+
+My terminus near,
+The clouds already closing in upon me,
+The voyage balk’d, the course disputed, lost,
+I yield my ships to Thee.
+
+My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,
+My brain feels rack’d, bewilder’d,
+Let the old timbers part, I will not part,
+I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,
+Thee, Thee at least I know.
+
+Is it the prophet’s thought I speak, or am I raving?
+What do I know of life? what of myself?
+I know not even my own work past or present,
+Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
+Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,
+Mocking, perplexing me.
+
+And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
+As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal’d my eyes,
+Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
+And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
+And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Sleepers
+
+I wander all night in my vision,
+Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
+Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
+Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
+Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
+
+How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,
+How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.
+
+The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the
+	livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
+The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their
+	strong-door’d rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging
+	from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
+The night pervades them and infolds them.
+
+The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on
+	the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
+The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
+The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
+And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.
+
+The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
+The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,
+The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?
+And the murder’d person, how does he sleep?
+
+The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
+And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
+The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
+And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.
+
+I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and
+	the most restless,
+I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
+The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.
+
+Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
+The earth recedes from me into the night,
+I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is
+	beautiful.
+
+I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers
+	each in turn,
+I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
+And I become the other dreamers.
+
+I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!
+
+I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,
+I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts whichever way look,
+Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is
+	neither ground nor sea.
+
+Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,
+Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,
+I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet besides,
+And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,
+To lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch’d arms, and
+	resume the way;
+Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting
+	music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!
+
+I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,
+The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
+He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,
+The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted or feeble person.
+
+I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,
+My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
+
+Double yourself and receive me darkness,
+Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.
+
+I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk.
+
+He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
+He rises with me silently from the bed.
+
+Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,
+I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
+
+My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
+I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.
+
+Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?
+I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
+I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
+
+I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
+Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake.
+
+It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman’s,
+I sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn my grandson’s
+	stockings.
+
+It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,
+I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.
+
+A shroud I see and I am the shroud, I wrap a body and lie in the coffin,
+It is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain here, it is
+	blank here, for reasons.
+
+(It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy,
+Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)
+
+I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies
+	of the sea,
+His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with
+	courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,
+I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
+I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on
+	the rocks.
+
+What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
+Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime
+	of his middle age?
+
+Steady and long he struggles,
+He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his strength
+	holds out,
+The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away,
+	they roll him, swing him, turn him,
+His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is
+	continually bruis’d on rocks,
+Swiftly and ought of sight is borne the brave corpse.
+
+I turn but do not extricate myself,
+Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.
+
+The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,
+The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts.
+
+I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear the burst as
+	she strikes, I hear the howls of dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.
+
+I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
+I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me.
+
+I search with the crowd, not one of the company is wash’d to us alive,
+In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.
+
+Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
+Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrench’d
+	hills amid a crowd of officers.
+His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops,
+He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch’d
+	from his cheeks,
+He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by
+	their parents.
+
+The same at last and at last when peace is declared,
+He stands in the room of the old tavern, the well-belov’d soldiers
+	all pass through,
+The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,
+The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the cheek,
+He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he shakes hands
+	and bids good-by to the army.
+
+Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together,
+Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on
+	the old homestead.
+
+A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,
+On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,
+Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop’d
+	her face,
+Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as
+	she spoke.
+
+My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the stranger,
+She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and
+	pliant limbs,
+The more she look’d upon her she loved her,
+Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,
+She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook’d
+	food for her,
+She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.
+
+The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the
+	afternoon she went away,
+O my mother was loth to have her go away,
+All the week she thought of her, she watch’d for her many a month,
+She remember’d her many a winter and many a summer,
+But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.
+
+A show of the summer softness--a contact of something unseen--an
+	amour of the light and air,
+I am jealous and overwhelm’d with friendliness,
+And will go gallivant with the light and air myself.
+
+O love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me,
+Autumn and winter are in the dreams, the farmer goes with his thrift,
+The droves and crops increase, the barns are well-fill’d.
+
+Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams,
+The sailor sails, the exile returns home,
+The fugitive returns unharm’d, the immigrant is back beyond months
+	and years,
+The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with
+	the well known neighbors and faces,
+They warmly welcome him, he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well off,
+The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage
+	home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,
+To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill’d ships,
+The Swiss foots it toward his hills, the Prussian goes his way, the
+	Hungarian his way, and the Pole his way,
+The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.
+
+The homeward bound and the outward bound,
+The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuye, the onanist, the female that
+	loves unrequited, the money-maker,
+The actor and actress, those through with their parts and those
+	waiting to commence,
+The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee
+	that is chosen and the nominee that has fail’d,
+The great already known and the great any time after to-day,
+The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form’d, the homely,
+The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced
+	him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,
+The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw,
+The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wrong’d,
+The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,
+I swear they are averaged now--one is no better than the other,
+The night and sleep have liken’d them and restored them.
+
+I swear they are all beautiful,
+Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is
+	beautiful,
+The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.
+
+Peace is always beautiful,
+The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.
+
+The myth of heaven indicates the soul,
+The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it
+	comes or it lags behind,
+It comes from its embower’d garden and looks pleasantly on itself
+	and encloses the world,
+Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting,and perfect and
+	clean the womb cohering,
+The head well-grown proportion’d and plumb, and the bowels and
+	joints proportion’d and plumb.
+
+The soul is always beautiful,
+The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place,
+What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in its place,
+The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,
+The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of
+	the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,
+The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go on
+	in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their turns,
+The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite--
+	they unite now.
+
+The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
+They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as
+	they lie unclothed,
+The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American
+	are hand in hand,
+Learn’d and unlearn’d are hand in hand, and male and female are hand
+	in hand,
+The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they
+	press close without lust, his lips press her neck,
+The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with
+	measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with
+	measureless love,
+The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
+The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is
+	inarm’d by friend,
+The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar,
+	the wrong ’d made right,
+The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master
+	salutes the slave,
+The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the
+	suffering of sick persons is reliev’d,
+The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound,
+	the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress’d
+	head is free,
+The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother
+	than ever,
+Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,
+The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition,
+They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the
+	night, and awake.
+
+I too pass from the night,
+I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you.
+
+Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
+I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,
+I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,
+I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you, but
+	I know I came well and shall go well.
+
+I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,
+I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.
+
+
+
+
+Transpositions
+
+Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever
+	bawling--let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands;
+Let judges and criminals be transposed--let the prison-keepers be
+	put in prison--let those that were prisoners take the keys;
+Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To Think of Time
+
+To think of time--of all that retrospection,
+To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.
+
+Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?
+Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
+Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?
+
+Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?
+If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.
+
+To think that the sun rose in the east--that men and women were
+	flexible, real, alive--that every thing was alive,
+To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part,
+To think that we are now here and bear our part.
+
+Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement,
+Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.
+
+The dull nights go over and the dull days also,
+The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,
+The physician after long putting off gives the silent and terrible
+	look for an answer,
+The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters
+	are sent for,
+Medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long
+	pervaded the rooms,)
+The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
+The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
+The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,
+The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it,
+It is palpable as the living are palpable.
+
+The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,
+But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously
+	on the corpse.
+
+To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials,
+To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking
+	great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them.
+
+To think how eager we are in building our houses,
+To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent.
+
+(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or
+	seventy or eighty years at most,
+I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)
+
+Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth--they never
+	cease--they are the burial lines,
+He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall
+	surely be buried.
+
+
+A reminiscence of the vulgar fate,
+A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,
+Each after his kind.
+
+Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river,
+	half-frozen mud in the streets,
+A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of December,
+A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver,
+	the cortege mostly drivers.
+
+Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell,
+The gate is pass’d, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living
+	alight, the hearse uncloses,
+The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on
+	the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel’d in,
+The mound above is flatted with the spades--silence,
+A minute--no one moves or speaks--it is done,
+He is decently put away--is there any thing more?
+
+He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking,
+Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate
+	hearty, drank hearty,
+Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the
+	last, sicken’d, was help’d by a contribution,
+Died, aged forty-one years--and that was his funeral.
+
+Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap,
+	wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen,
+Boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you
+	loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind,
+Good day’s work, bad day’s work, pet stock, mean stock, first out,
+	last out, turning-in at night,
+To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers, and he
+	there takes no interest in them.
+
+The markets, the government, the working-man’s wages, to think what
+	account they are through our nights and days,
+To think that other working-men will make just as great account of
+	them, yet we make little or no account.
+
+The vulgar and the refined, what you call sin and what you call
+	goodness, to think how wide a difference,
+To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie
+	beyond the difference.
+
+To think how much pleasure there is,
+Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or
+	planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family?
+Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the
+	beautiful maternal cares?
+These also flow onward to others, you and I flow onward,
+But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.
+
+Your farm, profits, crops--to think how engross’d you are,
+To think there will still be farms, profits, crops, yet for you of
+	what avail?
+
+What will be will be well, for what is is well,
+To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.
+
+The domestic joys, the dally housework or business, the building of
+	houses, are not phantasms, they have weight, form, location,
+Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them
+	phantasms,
+The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
+The earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his
+	life are well-consider’d.
+
+You are not thrown to the winds, you gather certainly and safely
+	around yourself,
+Yourself! yourself!. yourself, for ever and ever!
+
+It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and
+	father, it is to identify you,
+It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided,
+Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you,
+You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
+
+The threads that were spun are gather’d, the wet crosses the warp,
+	the pattern is systematic.
+
+The preparations have every one been justified,
+The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments, the baton
+	has given the signal.
+
+The guest that was coming, he waited long, he is now housed,
+He is one of those who are beautiful and happy, he is one of those
+	that to look upon and be with is enough.
+
+The law of the past cannot be eluded,
+The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
+The law of the living cannot be eluded, it is eternal,
+The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
+The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
+The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons, not one iota thereof
+	can be eluded.
+
+Slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
+Northerner goes carried and Southerner goes carried, and they on the
+	Atlantic side and they on the Pacific,
+And they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all
+	over the earth.
+
+The great masters and kosmos are well as they go, the heroes and
+	good-doers are well,
+The known leaders and inventors and the rich owners and pious and
+	distinguish’d may be well,
+But there is more account than that, there is strict account of all.
+
+The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
+The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
+The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go.
+
+Of and in all these things,
+I have dream’d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of
+	us changed,
+I have dream’d that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present
+	and past law,
+And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and
+	past law,
+For I have dream’d that the law they are under now is enough.
+
+And I have dream’d that the purpose and essence of the known life,
+	the transient,
+Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent.
+
+If all came but to ashes of dung,
+If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d,
+Then indeed suspicion of death.
+
+Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,
+Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?
+
+Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
+Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
+The whole universe indicates that it is good,
+The past and the present indicate that it is good.
+
+How beautiful and perfect are the animals!
+How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
+What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,
+The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable
+	fluids perfect;
+Slowly and surely they have pass’d on to this, and slowly and surely
+	they yet pass on.
+
+I swear I think now that every thing without exception has an eternal soul!
+The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the
+	animals!
+
+I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
+That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for
+	it, and the cohering is for it!
+And all preparation is for it--and identity is for it--and life and
+	materials are altogether for it!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Darest Thou Now O Soul
+
+Darest thou now O soul,
+Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
+Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
+
+No map there, nor guide,
+Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
+Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
+
+I know it not O soul,
+Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
+All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.
+
+Till when the ties loosen,
+All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
+Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
+
+Then we burst forth, we float,
+In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
+Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.
+
+
+
+
+Whispers of Heavenly Death
+
+Whispers of heavenly death murmur’d I hear,
+Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,
+Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,
+Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,
+(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)
+
+I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,
+Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,
+With at times a half-dimm’d sadden’d far-off star,
+Appearing and disappearing.
+
+(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;
+On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,
+Some soul is passing over.)
+
+
+
+
+Chanting the Square Deific
+
+Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides,
+Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,
+Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah am I,
+Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;
+Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any,
+Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments,
+As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,
+Aged beyond computation, yet never new, ever with those mighty laws rolling,
+Relentless I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man’s life;
+Therefore let none expect mercy--have the seasons, gravitation, the
+	appointed days, mercy? no more have I,
+But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days
+	that forgive not,
+I dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least remorse.
+
+Consolator most mild, the promis’d one advancing,
+With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,
+Foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and poems,
+From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes--lo! Hermes I--lo! mine is
+	Hercules’ face,
+All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,
+Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and
+	crucified, and many times shall be again,
+All the world have I given up for my dear brothers’ and sisters’
+	sake, for the soul’s sake,
+Wanding my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss
+	of affection,
+For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and
+	all-enclosing charity,
+With indulgent words as to children, with fresh and sane words, mine only,
+Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin’d myself to an
+	early death;
+But my charity has no death--my wisdom dies not, neither early nor late,
+And my sweet love bequeath’d here and elsewhere never dies.
+
+Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,
+Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,
+Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,
+With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart,
+	proud as any,
+Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me,
+Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles,
+(Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel’d, and my wiles
+	done, but that will never be,)
+Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly
+	appearing, (and old ones also,)
+Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any,
+Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.
+
+Santa Spirita, breather, life,
+Beyond the light, lighter than light,
+Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,
+Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,
+Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including
+	Saviour and Satan,
+Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were God?)
+Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,
+	(namely the unseen,)
+Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, the
+	general soul,
+Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,
+Breathe my breath also through these songs.
+
+
+
+
+Of Him I Love Day and Night
+
+Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was dead,
+And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he was
+	not in that place,
+And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find him,
+And I found that every place was a burial-place;
+The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)
+The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,
+	Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as
+	of the living,
+And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;
+And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
+And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d,
+And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
+And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
+	even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,
+And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly
+	render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied,
+Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
+
+Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,
+Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,
+Earth to a chamber of mourning turns--I hear the o’erweening, mocking
+	voice,
+Matter is conqueror--matter, triumphant only, continues onward.
+
+Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
+The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain,
+The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,
+Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.
+
+I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
+I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,
+	your mute inquiry,
+Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,--
+Old age, alarm’d, uncertain--a young woman’s voice, appealing to
+	me for comfort;
+A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?
+
+
+
+
+As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
+
+As if a phantom caress’d me,
+I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;
+But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the
+	one I loved that caress’d me,
+As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has
+	utterly disappear’d.
+And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.
+
+
+
+
+Assurances
+
+I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul;
+I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and
+	face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant
+	of, calm and actual faces,
+I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in
+	any iota of the world,
+I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,
+	in vain I try to think how limitless,
+I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their
+	swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day
+	be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,
+I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,
+I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have
+	their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and
+	the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,
+I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are
+	provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the
+	deaths of little children are provided for,
+(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport
+	of all Life, is not well provided for?)
+I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of
+	them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has
+	gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,
+I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any
+	time, is provided for in the inherences of things,
+I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I
+	believe Heavenly Death provides for all.
+
+
+
+
+Quicksand Years
+
+Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,
+Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,
+Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not,
+One’s-self must never give way--that is the final substance--that
+	out of all is sure,
+Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?
+When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?
+
+
+
+
+That Music Always Round Me
+
+That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long
+	untaught I did not hear,
+But now the chorus I hear and am elated,
+A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of
+	daybreak I hear,
+A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,
+A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,
+The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and
+	violins, all these I fill myself with,
+I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite
+	meanings,
+I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
+	contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
+I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think
+	begin to know them.
+
+
+
+
+What Ship Puzzled at Sea
+
+What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?
+Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect
+	pilot needs?
+Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,
+Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.
+
+
+
+
+A Noiseless Patient Spider
+
+A noiseless patient spider,
+I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
+Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
+It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
+Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
+
+And you O my soul where you stand,
+Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
+Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
+	connect them,
+Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
+Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
+
+
+
+
+O Living Always, Always Dying
+
+O living always, always dying!
+O the burials of me past and present,
+O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
+O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)
+O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and
+	look at where I cast them,
+To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.
+
+
+
+
+To One Shortly to Die
+
+From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
+You are to die--let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
+I am exact and merciless, but I love you--there is no escape for you.
+
+Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you ’ust feel it,
+I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,
+I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,
+I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
+I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is
+	eternal, you yourself will surely escape,
+The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.
+
+The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,
+Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
+You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
+You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,
+	I am with you,
+I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,
+I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.
+
+
+
+
+Night on the Prairies
+
+Night on the prairies,
+The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,
+The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;
+I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now
+	never realized before.
+
+Now I absorb immortality and peace,
+I admire death and test propositions.
+
+How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!
+The same old man and soul--the same old aspirations, and the same content.
+
+I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited,
+I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless
+	around me myriads of other globes.
+
+Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will
+	measure myself by them,
+And now touch’d with the lives of other globes arrived as far along
+	as those of the earth,
+Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth,
+I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
+Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.
+
+O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
+I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
+
+
+
+
+Thought
+
+As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing,
+To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a
+	wreck at sea,
+Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and
+	wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,
+Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President,
+Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder’d
+	off the Northeast coast and going down--of the steamship Arctic
+	going down,
+Of the veil’d tableau-women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic,
+	waiting the moment that draws so close--O the moment!
+
+A huge sob--a few bubbles--the white foam spirting up--and then the
+	women gone,
+Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on--and I now
+	pondering, Are those women indeed gone?
+Are souls drown’d and destroy’d so?
+Is only matter triumphant?
+
+
+
+
+The Last Invocation
+
+At the last, tenderly,
+From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
+From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
+Let me be wafted.
+
+Let me glide noiselessly forth;
+With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,
+Set ope the doors O soul.
+
+Tenderly--be not impatient,
+(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
+Strong is your hold O love.)
+
+
+
+
+As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
+
+As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,
+Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
+I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
+(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
+
+
+
+
+Pensive and Faltering
+
+Pensive and faltering,
+The words the Dead I write,
+For living are the Dead,
+(Haply the only living, only real,
+And I the apparition, I the spectre.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
+
+Thou Mother with thy equal brood,
+Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,
+A special song before I go I’d sing o’er all the rest,
+For thee, the future.
+
+I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,
+I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,
+I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish’d.
+
+The paths to the house I seek to make,
+But leave to those to come the house itself.
+
+Belief I sing, and preparation;
+As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,
+But greater still from what is yet to come,
+Out of that formula for thee I sing.
+
+As a strong bird on pinions free,
+Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
+Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,
+Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.
+
+The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,
+Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
+Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor
+	library;
+But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of
+	an Illinois prairie,
+With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas
+	uplands, or Florida’s glades,
+Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,
+With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,
+And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound,
+That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.
+
+And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,
+Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted
+	for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,
+Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou
+	transcendental Union!
+By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,
+Thought of man justified, blended with God,
+Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!
+Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!
+
+Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,
+To formulate the Modern--out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,
+Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,
+(Recast, may-be discard them, end them--maybe their work is done,
+	who knows?)
+By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead,
+To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.
+
+And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain,
+Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long,
+Thou carefully prepared by it so long--haply thou but unfoldest it,
+	only maturest it,
+It to eventuate in thee--the essence of the by-gone time contain’d in thee,
+Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with
+	reference to thee;
+Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,
+The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.
+
+Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,
+Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the Present only,
+The Past is also stored in thee,
+Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western
+	continent alone,
+Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,
+With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or
+	swim with thee,
+With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou
+	bear’st the other continents,
+Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;
+Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou
+	carriest great companions,
+Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
+And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
+
+Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,
+Like a limitless golden cloud filling the westernr sky,
+Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,
+Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,
+Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing,
+Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength
+	and life,
+World of the real--world of the twain in one,
+World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to
+	identity, body, by it alone,
+Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials,
+By history’s cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent,
+Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be
+	constructed here,
+(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures
+	to come,)
+Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform’d, neither do I define thee,
+How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?
+I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,
+I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past,
+I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe,
+But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee,
+I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now,
+I merely thee ejaculate!
+
+Thee in thy future,
+Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen’d mind,
+	thy soaring spirit,
+Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving,
+	fructifying all,
+Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity,
+Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh’d so
+	long upon the mind of man,
+The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man;
+Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male--thee in thy
+	athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,
+(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,
+	endear’d alike, forever equal,)
+Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain,
+Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest
+	material civilization must remain in vain,)
+Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship--thee in no single
+	bible, saviour, merely,
+Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant
+	within thyself, equal to any, divine as any,
+(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor
+	in thy century’s visible growth,
+But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!)
+Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students,
+	born of thee,
+Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy high original festivals,
+	operas, lecturers, preachers,
+Thee in thy ultimate, (the preparations only now completed, the
+	edifice on sure foundations tied,)
+Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational
+	joys, thy love and godlike aspiration,
+In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung’d orators, thy
+	sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans,
+These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy.
+
+Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good
+	for thee,
+Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,
+Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.
+
+(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,
+To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,
+Set in the sky of Law.)
+
+Land of unprecedented faith, God’s faith,
+Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav’d,
+The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence
+	for what it is boldly laid bare,
+Open’d by thee to heaven’s light for benefit or bale.
+
+Not for success alone,
+Not to fair-sail unintermitted always,
+The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war
+	shall cover thee all over,
+(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials,
+For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous
+	peace, not war;)
+In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in
+	disease shalt swelter,
+The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy
+	breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,
+Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face
+	with hectic,
+But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all,
+Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,
+They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,
+While thou, Time’s spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still
+	extricating, fusing,
+Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with immortal blent,)
+Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the
+	body and the mind,
+The soul, its destinies.
+
+The soul, its destinies, the real real,
+(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)
+In thee America, the soul, its destinies,
+Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!
+By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d, (by these thyself solidifying,)
+Thou mental, moral orb--thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!
+The Present holds thee not--for such vast growth as thine,
+For such unparallel’d flight as thine, such brood as thine,
+The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.
+
+
+
+
+A Paumanok Picture
+
+Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
+Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers
+	--they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
+The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the
+	beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
+The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
+Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand
+	ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,
+The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
+Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,
+	the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling
+
+Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
+Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
+The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
+And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
+O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.
+
+Hear me illustrious!
+Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
+Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy
+	touching-distant beams enough,
+Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.
+
+(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
+I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
+Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice--and
+	thou O sun,
+As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of
+	flame gigantic,
+I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)
+
+Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
+O’er myriad farms, o’er lands and waters North and South,
+O’er Mississippi’s endless course, o’er Texas’ grassy plains,
+	Kanada’s woods,
+O’er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
+Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas,
+Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
+Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of
+	thy million millions,
+Strike through these chants.
+
+Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
+Prepare the later afternoon of me myself--prepare my lengthening shadows,
+Prepare my starry nights.
+
+
+
+
+Faces
+
+Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces!
+Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
+The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,
+The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers
+	and judges broad at the back-top,
+The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved
+	blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens,
+The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face,
+The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or
+	despised face,
+The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
+	many children,
+The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
+The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,
+The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,
+A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper,
+A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.
+
+Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces
+	and faces and faces,
+I see them and complain not, and am content with all.
+
+Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their
+	own finale?
+
+This now is too lamentable a face for a man,
+Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,
+Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.
+
+This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage,
+Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
+
+This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
+Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.
+
+This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,
+And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.
+
+This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
+Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show
+	nothing but their whites,
+Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails,
+The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he
+	speculates well.
+
+This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
+And this is some murderer’s knife with a half-pull’d scabbard.
+
+This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
+An unceasing death-bell tolls there.
+
+Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas’d and
+	cadaverous march?
+Well, you cannot trick me.
+
+I see your rounded never-erased flow,
+I see ’neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.
+
+Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,
+You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.
+
+I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at
+	the asylum,
+And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,
+I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
+The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,
+And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
+And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm’d, every inch
+	as good as myself.
+
+The Lord advances, and yet advances,
+Always the shadow in front, always the reach’d hand bringing up the
+	laggards.
+
+Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming,
+I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way,
+I hear victorious drums.
+
+This face is a life-boat,
+This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,
+This face is flavor’d fruit ready for eating,
+This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.
+
+These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
+They show their descent from the Master himself.
+
+Off the word I have spoken I except not one--red, white, black, are
+	all deific,
+In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.
+
+Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
+Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,
+I read the promise and patiently wait.
+
+This is a full-grown lily’s face,
+She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden pickets,
+Come here she blushingly cries, Come nigh to me limber-hipp’d man,
+Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
+Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
+Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.
+
+The old face of the mother of many children,
+Whist! I am fully content.
+
+Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
+It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
+It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them.
+
+I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
+I heard what the singers were singing so long,
+Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.
+
+Behold a woman!
+She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more
+	beautiful than the sky.
+
+She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
+The sun just shines on her old white head.
+
+Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
+Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with
+	the distaff and the wheel.
+
+The melodious character of the earth,
+The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go,
+The justified mother of men.
+
+
+
+
+The Mystic Trumpeter
+
+Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,
+Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.
+
+I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,
+Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,
+Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.
+
+Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds
+Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life
+Was fill’d with aspirations high, unform’d ideals,
+Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,
+That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,
+Gives out to no one’s ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,
+That I may thee translate.
+
+Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,
+While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
+The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,
+A holy calm descends like dew upon me,
+I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,
+I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;
+Thy song expands my numb’d imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,
+Floating and basking upon heaven’s lake.
+
+Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,
+Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.
+
+What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,
+Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,
+	the troubadours are singing,
+Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy Graal;
+I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy armor
+	seated on stately champing horses,
+I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;
+I see the Crusaders’ tumultuous armies--hark, how the cymbals clang,
+Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high.
+
+Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
+Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,
+Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
+The heart of man and woman all for love,
+No other theme but love--knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.
+
+O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!
+I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that
+	heat the world,
+The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,
+So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death;
+Love, that is all the earth to lovers--love, that mocks time and space,
+Love, that is day and night--love, that is sun and moon and stars,
+Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
+No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.
+
+Blow again trumpeter--conjure war’s alarums.
+
+Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,
+Lo, where the arm’d men hasten--lo, mid the clouds of dust the glint
+	of bayonets,
+I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the
+	smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;
+Nor war alone--thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every
+	sight of fear,
+The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder--I hear the cries for help!
+I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below deck the
+	terrible tableaus.
+
+O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,
+Thou melt’st my heart, my brain--thou movest, drawest, changest
+	them at will;
+And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,
+Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,
+I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the
+	whole earth,
+I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes
+	all mine,
+Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds
+	and hatreds,
+Utter defeat upon me weighs--all lost--the foe victorious,
+(Yet ’mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,
+Endurance, resolution to the last.)
+
+
+Now trumpeter for thy close,
+Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
+Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
+Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
+Give me for once its prophecy and joy.
+
+O glad, exulting, culminating song!
+A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes,
+Marches of victory--man disenthral’d--the conqueror at last,
+Hymns to the universal God from universal man--all joy!
+A reborn race appears--a perfect world, all joy!
+Women and men in wisdom innocence and health--all joy!
+Riotous laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy!
+War, sorrow, suffering gone--the rank earth purged--nothing but joy left!
+The ocean fill’d with joy--the atmosphere all joy!
+Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
+Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
+Joy! joy! all over joy!
+
+
+
+
+To a Locomotive in Winter
+
+Thee for my recitative,
+Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
+Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
+Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,
+Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,
+	shuttling at thy sides,
+Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
+Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,
+Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
+The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
+Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of
+	thy wheels,
+Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
+Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
+Type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent,
+For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
+With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
+By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,
+By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.
+
+Fierce-throated beauty!
+Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps
+	at night,
+Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake,
+	rousing all,
+Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
+(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
+Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,
+Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
+To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.
+
+
+
+
+O Magnet-South
+
+O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!
+O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all
+	dear to me!
+O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where
+	I was born--the grains, plants, rivers,
+Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,
+	over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,
+Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the
+	Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,
+O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their
+	banks again,
+Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the
+	Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings
+	or dense forests,
+I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the
+	blossoming titi;
+Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast
+	up the Carolinas,
+I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,
+	the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the
+	graceful palmetto,
+I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,
+	and dart my vision inland;
+O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
+The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,
+The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged
+	with mistletoe and trailing moss,
+The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in
+	these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the
+	fugitive has his conceal’d hut;)
+O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable
+	swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the
+	alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and
+	the whirr of the rattlesnake,
+The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,
+	singing through the moon-lit night,
+The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
+A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn,
+	slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful
+	ears each well-sheath’d in its husk;
+O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;
+O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
+O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and
+	never wander more.
+
+
+
+
+Mannahatta
+
+I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
+Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
+
+Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
+	musical, self-sufficient,
+I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
+Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
+Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
+	island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
+Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,
+	light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
+Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
+The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining
+	islands, the heights, the villas,
+The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the
+	ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
+The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses
+	of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
+Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
+The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the
+	brown-faced sailors,
+The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,
+The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,
+	passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
+The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,
+	beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
+Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,
+A million people--manners free and superb--open voices--hospitality--
+	the most courageous and friendly young men,
+City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
+City nested in bays! my city!
+
+
+
+
+All Is Truth
+
+O me, man of slack faith so long,
+Standing aloof, denying portions so long,
+Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,
+Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,
+	but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,
+Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.
+
+(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be
+	realized,
+I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
+And that the universe does.)
+
+Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?
+Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?
+	or in the meat and blood?
+
+Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see
+	that there are really no liars or lies after all,
+And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called
+	lies are perfect returns,
+And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,
+And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as
+	space is compact,
+And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but
+	that all is truth without exception;
+And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,
+And sing and laugh and deny nothing.
+
+
+
+
+A Riddle Song
+
+That which eludes this verse and any verse,
+Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
+Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
+And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
+Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,
+Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
+Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
+Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
+Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted,
+Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d,
+Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.
+
+Indifferently, ’mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
+Behind the mountain and the wood,
+Companion of the city’s busiest streets, through the assemblage,
+It and its radiations constantly glide.
+
+In looks of fair unconscious babes,
+Or strangely in the coffin’d dead,
+Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,
+As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,
+Hiding yet lingering.
+
+Two little breaths of words comprising it,
+Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.
+
+How ardently for it!
+How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it!
+
+How many travelers started from their homes and neer return’d!
+How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!
+What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it!
+How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it--and
+	shall be to the end!
+How all heroic martyrdoms to it!
+How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!
+How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and
+	land, have drawn men’s eyes,
+Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs,
+Or midnight’s silent glowing northern lights unreachable.
+
+Haply God’s riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,
+The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,
+And heaven at last for it.
+
+
+
+
+Excelsior
+
+Who has gone farthest? for I would go farther,
+And who has been just? for I would be the most just person of the earth,
+And who most cautious? for I would be more cautious,
+And who has been happiest? O I think it is I--I think no one was
+	ever happier than I,
+And who has lavish’d all? for I lavish constantly the best I have,
+And who proudest? for I think I have reason to be the proudest son
+	alive--for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city,
+And who has been bold and true? for I would be the boldest and
+	truest being of the universe,
+And who benevolent? for I would show more benevolence than all the rest,
+And who has receiv’d the love of the most friends? for I know what
+	it is to receive the passionate love of many friends,
+And who possesses a perfect and enamour’d body? for I do not believe
+	any one possesses a more perfect or enamour’d body than mine,
+And who thinks the amplest thoughts? for I would surround those thoughts,
+And who has made hymns fit for the earth? for I am mad with
+	devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth.
+
+
+
+
+Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
+
+Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
+Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
+(For what is my life or any man’s life but a conflict with foes, the
+	old, the incessant war?)
+You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
+You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!)
+You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
+You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
+You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d ennuis!
+Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth,
+It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
+It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.
+
+
+
+
+Thoughts
+
+Of public opinion,
+Of a calm and cool fiat sooner or later, (how impassive! how certain
+	and final!)
+Of the President with pale face asking secretly to himself, What
+	will the people say at last?
+Of the frivolous Judge--of the corrupt Congressman, Governor,
+	Mayor--of such as these standing helpless and exposed,
+Of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,)
+Of the lessening year by year of venerableness, and of the dicta of
+	officers, statutes, pulpits, schools,
+Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the
+	intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality;
+Of the true New World--of the Democracies resplendent en-masse,
+Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them,
+Of the shining sun by them--of the inherent light, greater than the rest,
+Of the envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them.
+
+
+
+
+Mediums
+
+They shall arise in the States,
+They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness,
+They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos,
+They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive,
+They shall be complete women and men, their pose brawny and supple,
+	their drink water, their blood clean and clear,
+They shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they
+	shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of
+	Chicago the great city.
+They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and
+	oratresses,
+Strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of
+	poems shall come from their lives, they shall be makers and finders,
+Of them and of their works shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels,
+Characters, events, retrospections, shall be convey’d in gospels,
+	trees, animals, waters, shall be convey’d,
+Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey’d.
+
+
+
+
+Weave in, My Hardy Life
+
+Weave in, weave in, my hardy life,
+Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come,
+Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight weave in,
+Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the wet, the warp, incessant
+	weave, tire not,
+(We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor
+	really aught we know,
+But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the
+	death-envelop’d march of peace as well as war goes on,)
+For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave,
+We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.
+
+
+
+
+Spain, 1873-74
+
+Out of the murk of heaviest clouds,
+Out of the feudal wrecks and heap’d-up skeletons of kings,
+Out of that old entire European debris, the shatter’d mummeries,
+Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,
+Lo, Freedom’s features fresh undimm’d look forth--the same immortal
+	face looks forth;
+(A glimpse as of thy Mother’s face Columbia,
+A flash significant as of a sword,
+Beaming towards thee.)
+
+Nor think we forget thee maternal;
+Lag’d’st thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee?
+Ah, but thou hast thyself now appear’d to us--we know thee,
+Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself,
+Thou waitest there as everywhere thy time.
+
+
+
+
+By Broad Potomac’s Shore
+
+By broad Potomac’s shore, again old tongue,
+(Still uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?)
+Again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush
+	spring returning,
+Again the freshness and the odors, again Virginia’s summer sky,
+	pellucid blue and silver,
+Again the forenoon purple of the hills,
+Again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green,
+Again the blood-red roses blooming.
+
+Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses!
+Lave subtly with your waters every line Potomac!
+Give me of you O spring, before I close, to put between its pages!
+O forenoon purple of the hills, before I close, of you!
+O deathless grass, of you!
+
+
+
+
+From Far Dakota’s Canyons  [June 25, 1876]
+
+From far Dakota’s canyons,
+Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the
+	silence,
+Haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.
+
+The battle-bulletin,
+The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
+The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
+In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter’d horses
+	for breastworks,
+The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.
+
+Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
+The loftiest of life upheld by death,
+The ancient banner perfectly maintain’d,
+O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!
+
+As sitting in dark days,
+Lone, sulky, through the time’s thick murk looking in vain for
+	light, for hope,
+From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,
+(The sun there at the centre though conceal’d,
+Electric life forever at the centre,)
+Breaks forth a lightning flash.
+
+Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,
+I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a
+	bright sword in thy hand,
+Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,
+(I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,)
+Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious,
+After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color,
+Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,
+Thou yieldest up thyself.
+
+
+
+
+Old War-Dreams
+
+In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
+Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)
+Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
+	I dream, I dream, I dream.
+
+Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
+Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so
+	unearthly bright,
+Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and
+	gather the heaps,
+	I dream, I dream, I dream.
+
+Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields,
+Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away
+	from the fallen,
+Onward I sped at the time--but now of their forms at night,
+	I dream, I dream, I dream.
+
+
+
+
+Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
+
+Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!
+Long yet your road, fateful flag--long yet your road, and lined with
+	bloody death,
+For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,
+All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner;
+Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne to flaunt unrival’d?
+O hasten flag of man--O with sure and steady step, passing highest
+	flags of kings,
+Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol--run up above them all,
+Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!
+
+
+
+
+What Best I See in Thee
+[To U. S. G. return’d from his World’s Tour]
+
+What best I see in thee,
+Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,
+Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,
+Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace,
+Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,
+Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;
+But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,
+Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,
+Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,
+Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round
+	world’s promenade,
+Were all so justified.
+
+
+
+
+Spirit That Form’d This Scene
+[Written in Platte Canyon, Colorado]
+
+Spirit that form’d this scene,
+These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,
+These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,
+These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
+These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,
+I know thee, savage spirit--we have communed together,
+Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;
+Wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art?
+To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
+The lyrist’s measur’d beat, the wrought-out temple’s grace--column
+	and polish’d arch forgot?
+But thou that revelest here--spirit that form’d this scene,
+They have remember’d thee.
+
+
+
+
+As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
+
+As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
+(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
+Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
+Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
+Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
+Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
+Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
+The announcements of recognized things, science,
+The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
+
+I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
+The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
+And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
+
+But I too announce solid things,
+Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
+Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
+	triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
+They stand for realities--all is as it should be.
+
+Then my realities;
+What else is so real as mine?
+Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face
+	of the earth,
+The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these
+	centuries-lasting songs,
+And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements
+	of any.
+
+
+
+
+A Clear Midnight
+
+This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
+Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
+Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
+	lovest best,
+Night, sleep, death and the stars.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+As the Time Draws Nigh
+
+As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,
+A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.
+
+I shall go forth,
+I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long,
+Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will
+	suddenly cease.
+
+O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
+Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? --and yet it is
+	enough, O soul;
+O soul, we have positively appear’d--that is enough.
+
+
+
+
+Years of the Modern
+
+Years of the modern! years of the unperform’d!
+Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,
+I see not America only, not only Liberty’s nation but other nations
+	preparing,
+I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity
+	of races,
+I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage,
+(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts
+	suitable to them closed?)
+I see Freedom, completely arm’d and victorious and very haughty,
+	with Law on one side and Peace on the other,
+A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
+What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
+I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions,
+I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken,
+I see the landmarks of European kings removed,
+I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)
+Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day,
+Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God,
+Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest!
+His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the
+	Pacific, the archipelagoes,
+With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
+	wholesale engines of war,
+With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all
+	geography, all lands;
+What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing under
+	the seas?
+Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
+Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim,
+The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war,
+No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights;
+Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
+	pierce it, is full of phantoms,
+Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me,
+This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams
+	O years!
+Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not
+	whether I sleep or wake;)
+The perform’d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
+The unperform’d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.
+
+
+
+
+Ashes of Soldiers
+
+Ashes of soldiers South or North,
+As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,
+The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,
+And again the advance of the armies.
+
+Noiseless as mists and vapors,
+From their graves in the trenches ascending,
+From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
+From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,
+In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or
+	single ones they come,
+And silently gather round me.
+
+Now sound no note O trumpeters,
+Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,
+With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah
+	my brave horsemen!
+My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
+With all the perils were yours.)
+
+Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn,
+Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for burial,
+Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.
+
+But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,
+Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,
+The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,
+I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.
+
+Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,
+Draw close, but speak not.
+
+Phantoms of countless lost,
+Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,
+Follow me ever--desert me not while I live.
+
+Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living--sweet are the musical
+	voices sounding,
+But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.
+
+Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,
+But love is not over--and what love, O comrades!
+Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising.
+
+Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
+Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
+Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.
+
+Perfume all--make all wholesome,
+Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
+O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.
+
+Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,
+That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,
+For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.
+
+
+
+
+Thoughts
+
+Of these years I sing,
+How they pass and have pass’d through convuls’d pains, as through
+	parturitions,
+How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure
+	fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people--illustrates
+	evil as well as good,
+The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one’s-self,
+How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths,
+	obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,
+How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or
+	see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results,
+(But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious
+	and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.)
+
+How the great cities appear--how the Democratic masses, turbulent,
+	willful, as I love them,
+How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the
+	sounding and resounding, keep on and on,
+How society waits unform’d, and is for a while between things ended
+	and things begun,
+How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of
+	freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and
+	of all that is begun,
+And how the States are complete in themselves--and how all triumphs
+	and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward,
+And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be
+	convuls’d, and serve other parturitions and transitions,
+And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses too,
+	serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors,
+	serves,
+And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.
+
+Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,
+Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to
+	impregnable and swarming places,
+Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,
+Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada,
+	and the rest,
+(Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,)
+Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for--and of what
+	all sights, North, South, East and West, are,
+Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the
+	unnamed lost ever present in my mind;
+Of the temporary use of materials for identity’s sake,
+Of the present, passing, departing--of the growth of completer men
+	than any yet,
+Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the
+	Mississippi flows,
+Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey’d and unsuspected,
+Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of
+	inalienable homesteads,
+Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and
+	sweet blood,
+Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,
+Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the
+	Anahuacs,
+Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,)
+Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there,
+(O it lurks in me night and day--what is gain after all to savageness
+	and freedom?)
+
+
+
+
+Song at Sunset
+
+Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,
+Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,
+Inflating my throat, you divine average,
+You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
+
+Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,
+Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,
+Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
+Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
+
+Illustrious every one!
+Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber’d spirits,
+Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect,
+Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body,
+Illustrious the passing light--illustrious the pale reflection on
+	the new moon in the western sky,
+Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.
+
+Good in all,
+In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
+In the annual return of the seasons,
+In the hilarity of youth,
+In the strength and flush of manhood,
+In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
+In the superb vistas of death.
+
+Wonderful to depart!
+Wonderful to be here!
+The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
+To breathe the air, how delicious!
+To speak--to walk--to seize something by the hand!
+To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh!
+To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!
+To be this incredible God I am!
+To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love.
+
+Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself
+How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
+How the clouds pass silently overhead!
+How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!
+How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!)
+How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches
+	and leaves!
+(Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)
+
+O amazement of things--even the least particle!
+O spirituality of things!
+O strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching
+	me and America!
+I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass
+	them forward.
+
+I too carol the sun, usher’d or at noon, or as now, setting,
+I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the
+	growths of the earth,
+I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
+
+As I steam’d down the Mississippi,
+As I wander’d over the prairies,
+As I have lived, as I have look’d through my windows my eyes,
+As I went forth in the morning, as I beheld the light breaking in the east,
+As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach
+	of the Western Sea,
+As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam’d,
+Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war,
+Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
+
+I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,
+I sing the endless finales of things,
+I say Nature continues, glory continues,
+I praise with electric voice,
+For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,
+And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
+
+O setting sun! though the time has come,
+I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.
+
+
+
+
+As at Thy Portals Also Death
+
+As at thy portals also death,
+Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
+To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
+To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
+(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
+I sit by the form in the coffin,
+I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks,
+	the closed eyes in the coffin;)
+To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth,
+	life, love, to me the best,
+I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
+And set a tombstone here.
+
+
+
+
+My Legacy
+
+The business man the acquirer vast,
+After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure,
+Devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths stocks, goods,
+	funds for a school or hospital,
+Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems
+	and gold.
+
+But I, my life surveying, closing,
+With nothing to show to devise from its idle years,
+Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,
+Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you,
+And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,
+I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.
+
+
+
+
+Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
+
+Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,
+Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing,
+(As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d,)
+As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d,
+Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my
+	sons, lose not an atom,
+And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,
+And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable,
+And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers’ depths,
+And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children’s
+	blood trickling redden’d,
+And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,
+My dead absorb or South or North--my young men’s bodies absorb,
+	and their precious precious blood,
+Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a
+	year hence,
+In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence,
+In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give
+	my immortal heroes,
+Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an
+	atom be lost,
+O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
+Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.
+
+
+
+
+Camps of Green
+
+Nor alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars,
+When as order’d forward, after a long march,
+Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens we halt for the night,
+Some of us so fatigued carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping
+	asleep in our tracks,
+Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle,
+Outposts of pickets posted surrounding alert through the dark,
+And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety,
+Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums,
+We rise up refresh’d, the night and sleep pass’d over, and resume our
+	journey,
+Or proceed to battle.
+
+Lo, the camps of the tents of green,
+Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling,
+With a mystic army, (is it too order’d forward? is it too only
+	halting awhile,
+Till night and sleep pass over?)
+
+Now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world,
+In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them, in the old and young,
+Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content
+	and silent there at last,
+Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of all,
+Of the corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and
+	generals all,
+And of each of us O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fought,
+(There without hatred we all, all meet.)
+
+For presently O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the
+	bivouac-camps of green,
+But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign,
+Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.
+
+
+
+
+The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]
+
+The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,
+The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,
+(Full well they know that message in the darkness,
+Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the
+	sad reverberations,)
+The passionate toll and clang--city to city, joining, sounding, passing,
+Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.
+
+
+
+
+As They Draw to a Close
+
+As they draw to a close,
+Of what underlies the precedent songs--of my aims in them,
+Of the seed I have sought to plant in them,
+Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them,
+(For them, for them have I lived, in them my work is done,)
+Of many an aspiration fond, of many a dream and plan;
+Through Space and Time fused in a chant, and the flowing eternal identity,
+To Nature encompassing these, encompassing God--to the joyous,
+	electric all,
+To the sense of Death, and accepting exulting in Death in its turn
+	the same as life,
+The entrance of man to sing;
+To compact you, ye parted, diverse lives,
+To put rapport the mountains and rocks and streams,
+And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,
+With you O soul.
+
+
+
+
+Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
+
+Joy, shipmate, Joy!
+(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
+Our life is closed, our life begins,
+The long, long anchorage we leave,
+The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
+She swiftly courses from the shore,
+Joy, shipmate, joy.
+
+
+
+
+The Untold Want
+
+The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
+Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.
+
+
+
+
+Portals
+
+What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the Unknown?
+And what are those of life but for Death?
+
+
+
+
+These Carols
+
+These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,
+For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.
+
+
+
+
+Now Finale to the Shore
+
+Now finale to the shore,
+Now land and life finale and farewell,
+Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,)
+Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas,
+Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
+Duly again to port and hawser’s tie returning;
+But now obey thy cherish’d secret wish,
+Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,
+To port and hawser’s tie no more returning,
+Depart upon thy endless cruise old Sailor.
+
+
+
+
+So Long!
+
+To conclude, I announce what comes after me.
+
+I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all,
+I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations.
+
+When America does what was promis’d,
+When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
+When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them,
+When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,
+Then to me and mine our due fruition.
+
+I have press’d through in my own right,
+I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and
+	the songs of life and death,
+And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.
+
+I have offer’d my style to every one, I have journey’d with confident step;
+While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long!
+And take the young woman’s hand and the young man’s hand for the last time.
+
+I announce natural persons to arise,
+I announce justice triumphant,
+I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,
+I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride.
+
+I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,
+I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble,
+I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics
+	of the earth insignificant.
+
+I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d,
+I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.
+
+I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!)
+I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste,
+	affectionate, compassionate, fully arm’d.
+
+I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
+I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.
+
+I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,
+I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.
+
+O thicker and faster--(So long!)
+O crowding too close upon me,
+I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,
+It appears to me I am dying.
+
+Hasten throat and sound your last,
+Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.
+
+Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
+At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,
+Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
+Curious envelop’d messages delivering,
+Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,
+Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,
+To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,
+To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set
+promulging,
+To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection
+	me more clearly explaining,
+To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of
+	their brains trying,
+So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
+Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making
+	me really undying,)
+The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have
+	been incessantly preparing.
+
+What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with
+	unshut mouth?
+Is there a single final farewell?
+My songs cease, I abandon them,
+From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you.
+
+Camerado, this is no book,
+Who touches this touches a man,
+(Is it night? are we here together alone?)
+It is I you hold and who holds you,
+I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.
+
+O how your fingers drowse me,
+Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans
+	of my ears,
+I feel immerged from head to foot,
+Delicious, enough.
+
+Enough O deed impromptu and secret,
+Enough O gliding present--enough O summ’d-up past.
+
+Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
+I give it especially to you, do not forget me,
+I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,
+I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras
+	ascending, while others doubtless await me,
+An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts
+	awakening rays about me, So long!
+Remember my words, I may again return,
+I love you, I depart from materials,
+I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Mannahatta
+
+My city’s fit and noble name resumed,
+Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
+A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
+	going, hurrying sea waves.
+
+
+
+
+Paumanok
+
+Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!
+One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,
+	steamers, sails,
+And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle--mighty hulls
+	dark-gliding in the distance.
+Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water--healthy air and soil!
+Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!
+
+
+
+
+From Montauk Point
+
+I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
+Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
+The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
+The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge
+	of waves,
+Seeking the shores forever.
+
+
+
+
+To Those Who’ve Fail’d
+
+To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,
+To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
+To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on
+	their ships,
+To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I’d rear
+	laurel-cover’d monument,
+High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,
+Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
+Quench’d by an early death.
+
+
+
+
+A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
+
+A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,
+My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
+Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
+Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love,
+Your aggregate retain’d entire--Of north, south, east and west, your
+	items all;
+Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
+The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia
+	falling pall-like round me,
+The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
+The undiminish’d faith--the groups of loving friends.
+
+
+
+
+The Bravest Soldiers
+
+Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through
+	the fight;
+But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.
+
+
+
+
+A Font of Type
+
+This latent mine--these unlaunch’d voices--passionate powers,
+Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,
+(Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)
+These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,
+Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
+Within the pallid slivers slumbering.
+
+
+
+
+As I Sit Writing Here
+
+As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
+Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,
+Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,
+May filter in my dally songs.
+
+
+
+
+My Canary Bird
+
+Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books,
+Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?
+But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,
+Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,
+Is it not just as great, O soul?
+
+
+
+
+Queries to My Seventieth Year
+
+Approaching, nearing, curious,
+Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death?
+Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
+Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
+Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,
+Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
+
+
+
+
+The Wallabout Martyrs
+
+Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
+More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
+Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,
+Once living men--once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
+The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.
+
+
+
+
+The First Dandelion
+
+Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,
+As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
+Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass--innocent, golden, calm
+	as the dawn,
+The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.
+
+
+
+
+America
+
+Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
+All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
+Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
+Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
+A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
+Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
+
+
+
+
+Memories
+
+How sweet the silent backward tracings!
+The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed
+	--their loves, joys, persons, voyages.
+
+
+
+
+To-Day and Thee
+
+The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;
+The course of Time and nations--Egypt, India, Greece and Rome;
+The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,
+Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,
+Garner’d for now and thee--To think of it!
+The heirdom all converged in thee!
+
+
+
+
+After the Dazzle of Day
+
+After the dazzle of day is gone,
+Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;
+After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,
+Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
+
+
+
+
+Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
+
+To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer--a pulse of thought,
+To memory of Him--to birth of Him.
+
+
+
+
+Out of May’s Shows Selected
+
+Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;
+Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
+The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
+The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
+The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.
+
+
+
+
+Halcyon Days
+
+Not from successful love alone,
+Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
+But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
+As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
+As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,
+As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
+	really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
+Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
+The brooding and blissful halcyon days!
+
+
+
+FANCIES AT NAVESINK
+
+	[I]  The Pilot in the Mist
+
+Steaming the northern rapids--(an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,
+A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,
+Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)
+Again ’tis just at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak,
+Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--I press through
+	foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,
+Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman
+Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.
+
+
+
+[II]  Had I the Choice
+
+Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
+To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
+Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
+Or Shakspere’s woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson’s fair ladies,
+Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme,
+	delight of singers;
+These, these, O sea, all these I’d gladly barter,
+Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,
+Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
+And leave its odor there.
+
+
+
+[III]  You Tides with Ceaseless Swell
+
+You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!
+You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space’s spread,
+Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,
+What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius’?
+	what Capella’s?
+What central heart--and you the pulse--vivifies all? what boundless
+	aggregate of all?
+What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in
+	you? what fluid, vast identity,
+Holding the universe with all its parts as one--as sailing in a ship?
+
+
+
+[IV]  Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning
+
+Last of ebb, and daylight waning,
+Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming,
+With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,
+Many a muffled confession--many a sob and whisper’d word,
+As of speakers far or hid.
+
+How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!
+Poets unnamed--artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs,
+Love’s unresponse--a chorus of age’s complaints--hope’s last words,
+Some suicide’s despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and
+	never again return.
+
+On to oblivion then!
+On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!
+On for your time, ye furious debouche!
+
+
+
+[V]  And Yet Not You Alone
+
+And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
+Nor you, ye lost designs alone--nor failures, aspirations;
+I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;
+Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again--duly the hinges turning,
+Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
+Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
+The rhythmus of Birth eternal.
+
+
+
+[VI]  Proudly the Flood Comes In
+
+Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
+Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
+All throbs, dilates--the farms, woods, streets of cities--workmen at work,
+Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing--steamers’ pennants
+	of smoke--and under the forenoon sun,
+Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
+	inward bound,
+Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
+
+
+
+[VII]  By That Long Scan of Waves
+
+By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself,
+In every crest some undulating light or shade--some retrospect,
+Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral,
+The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead,
+Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand,
+My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,
+By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,
+And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble--some
+	wave, or part of wave,
+Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.
+
+
+
+[VIII]  Then Last Of All
+
+Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,
+Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:
+Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,
+The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.
+
+
+
+
+Election Day, November, 1884
+
+If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
+’Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor
+	your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
+Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
+	geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
+Nor Oregon’s white cones--nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes--nor
+	Mississippi’s stream:
+--This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name--the still
+	small voice vibrating--America’s choosing day,
+(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the
+	quadriennial choosing,)
+The stretch of North and South arous’d--sea-board and inland--
+	Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,
+The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,
+The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,
+Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the
+	peaceful choice of all,
+Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
+--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart
+	pants, life glows:
+These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
+Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.
+
+
+
+
+With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
+
+With husky-haughty lips, O sea!
+Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
+Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,
+(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)
+Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
+Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,
+Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloos’d hurricanes,
+Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;
+Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all
+	eternity in thy content,
+(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee
+	greatest--no less could make thee,)
+Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet
+	never gain’st,
+Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of
+	freedom-lover pent,
+Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,
+By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,
+And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
+And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
+And undertones of distant lion roar,
+(Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear--but now, rapport for once,
+A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)
+The first and last confession of the globe,
+Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,
+The tale of cosmic elemental passion,
+Thou tellest to a kindred soul.
+
+
+
+
+Death of General Grant
+
+As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,
+From that great play on history’s stage eterne,
+That lurid, partial act of war and peace--of old and new contending,
+Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense;
+All past--and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,
+Victor’s and vanquish’d--Lincoln’s and Lee’s--now thou with them,
+Man of the mighty days--and equal to the days!
+Thou from the prairies!--tangled and many-vein’d and hard has been thy part,
+To admiration has it been enacted!
+
+
+
+
+Red Jacket (From Aloft)
+
+Upon this scene, this show,
+Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,
+(Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,)
+Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,
+As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,
+Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form,
+In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical
+	smile curving its phantom lips,
+Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.
+
+
+
+
+Washington’s Monument February, 1885
+
+Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:
+Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling,
+	comprehending,
+Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire--not
+	yours alone, America,
+Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,
+Or frozen North, or sultry South--the African’s--the Arab’s in his tent,
+Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;
+(Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same--the heir
+	legitimate, continued ever,
+The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line,
+Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--e’en in defeat
+	defeated not, the same:)
+Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,
+Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,
+Now, or to come, or past--where patriot wills existed or exist,
+Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,
+Stands or is rising thy true monument.
+
+
+
+
+Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
+
+Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,
+I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird--let me too welcome chilling drifts,
+E’en the profoundest chill, as now--a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d,
+Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay--(cold, cold, O cold!)
+These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,
+For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;
+Not summer’s zones alone--not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone,
+But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus
+	of years,
+These with gay heart I also sing.
+
+
+
+
+Broadway
+
+What hurrying human tides, or day or night!
+What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!
+What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!
+What curious questioning glances--glints of love!
+Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!
+Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups!
+(Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales;
+Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;)
+Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!
+Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming,
+	mocking life!
+Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!
+
+
+
+
+To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
+
+To get the final lilt of songs,
+To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones,
+Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;
+To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt--
+	to truly understand,
+To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
+Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.
+
+
+
+
+Old Salt Kossabone
+
+Far back, related on my mother’s side,
+Old Salt Kossabone, I’ll tell you how he died:
+(Had been a sailor all his life--was nearly 90--lived with his
+	married grandchild, Jenny;
+House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and
+	stretch to open sea;)
+The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his
+	regular custom,
+In his great arm chair by the window seated,
+(Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,)
+Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself--
+	And now the close of all:
+One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long--cross-tides
+	and much wrong going,
+At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering,
+And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering,
+	cleaving, as he watches,
+“She’s free--she’s on her destination”--these the last words--when
+	Jenny came, he sat there dead,
+Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother’s side, far back.
+
+
+
+
+The Dead Tenor
+
+As down the stage again,
+With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable,
+Back from the fading lessons of the past, I’d call, I’d tell and own,
+How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee!
+(So firm--so liquid-soft--again that tremulous, manly timbre!
+The perfect singing voice--deepest of all to me the lesson--trial
+	and test of all:)
+How through those strains distill’d--how the rapt ears, the soul of
+	me, absorbing
+Fernando’s heart, Manrico’s passionate call, Ernani’s, sweet Gennaro’s,
+I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting,
+Freedom’s and Love’s and Faith’s unloos’d cantabile,
+(As perfume’s, color’s, sunlight’s correlation:)
+From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor,
+A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel’d earth,
+To memory of thee.
+
+
+
+
+Continuities
+
+Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
+No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
+Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
+Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
+Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
+The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
+The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
+The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
+To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,
+With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
+
+
+
+
+Yonnondio
+
+A song, a poem of itself--the word itself a dirge,
+Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night,
+To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;
+Yonnondio--I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with
+	plains and mountains dark,
+I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors,
+As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the
+	twilight,
+(Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls!
+No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)
+Yonnondio! Yonnondio!--unlimn’d they disappear;
+To-day gives place, and fades--the cities, farms, factories fade;
+A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air
+	for a moment,
+Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.
+
+
+
+
+Life
+
+Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;
+(Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies--and fresh again;)
+Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new;
+Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud
+	applause;
+Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;
+Struggling to-day the same--battling the same.
+
+
+
+
+“Going Somewhere”
+
+My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,
+(Now buried in an English grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,)
+Ended our talk--“The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
+	learning, intuitions deep,
+“Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution,
+	Metaphysics all,
+“Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
+“Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is
+	duly over,)
+“The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,
+“All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere.”
+
+
+
+
+Small the Theme of My Chant
+
+Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest--namely, One’s-Self--
+	a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing.
+Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone,
+	nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;--I say the Form complete
+	is worthier far. The Female equally with the Male, I sing.
+Nor cease at the theme of One’s-Self. I speak the word of the
+	modern, the word En-Masse.
+My Days I sing, and the Lands--with interstice I knew of hapless War.
+(O friend, whoe’er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I
+	feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return.
+And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than once, and
+	link’d together let us go.)
+
+
+
+
+True Conquerors
+
+Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,)
+Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,
+Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars;
+Enough that they’ve survived at all--long life’s unflinching ones!
+Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all--
+	in that alone,
+True conquerors o’er all the rest.
+
+
+
+
+The United States to Old World Critics
+
+Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,
+Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;
+As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,
+Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,
+The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.
+
+
+
+
+The Calming Thought of All
+
+That coursing on, whate’er men’s speculations,
+Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,
+Amid the bawling presentations new and old,
+The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.
+
+
+
+
+Thanks in Old Age
+
+Thanks in old age--thanks ere I go,
+For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air--for life, mere life,
+For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear--you,
+	father--you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
+For all my days--not those of peace alone--the days of war the same,
+For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
+For shelter, wine and meat--for sweet appreciation,
+(You distant, dim unknown--or young or old--countless, unspecified,
+	readers belov’d,
+We never met, and neer shall meet--and yet our souls embrace, long,
+	close and long;)
+For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books--for colors, forms,
+For all the brave strong men--devoted, hardy men--who’ve forward
+	sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands
+For braver, stronger, more devoted men--(a special laurel ere I go,
+	to life’s war’s chosen ones,
+The cannoneers of song and thought--the great artillerists--the
+	foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)
+As soldier from an ended war return’d--As traveler out of myriads,
+	to the long procession retrospective,
+Thanks--joyful thanks!--a soldier’s, traveler’s thanks.
+
+
+
+
+Life and Death
+
+The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,
+Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
+By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on,
+To ours to-day--and we pass on the same.
+
+
+
+
+The Voice of the Rain
+
+And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
+Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
+I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
+Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
+Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and
+	yet the same,
+I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
+And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
+And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
+	and make pure and beautify it;
+(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
+Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)
+
+
+
+
+Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here
+
+Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;
+Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt--A little while,
+And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and
+	growth--a thousand forms shall rise
+From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
+
+Thine eyes, ears--all thy best attributes--all that takes cognizance
+	of natural beauty,
+Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the
+	delicate miracles of earth,
+Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,
+The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming
+	plum and cherry;
+With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the
+	flitting bluebird;
+For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
+
+
+
+
+While Not the Past Forgetting
+
+While not the past forgetting,
+To-day, at least, contention sunk entire--peace, brotherhood uprisen;
+For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands,
+Lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, North or South,
+(Nor for the past alone--for meanings to the future,)
+Wreaths of roses and branches of palm.
+
+
+
+
+The Dying Veteran
+
+Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,
+Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,
+I cast a reminiscence--(likely ’twill offend you,
+I heard it in my boyhood;)--More than a generation since,
+A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,
+(Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic,
+Had fought in the ranks--fought well--had been all through the
+	Revolutionary war,)
+Lay dying--sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,
+Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words:
+“Let me return again to my war-days,
+To the sights and scenes--to forming the line of battle,
+To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,
+To the cannons, the grim artillery,
+To the galloping aides, carrying orders,
+To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,
+The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;
+Away with your life of peace!--your joys of peace!
+Give me my old wild battle-life again!”
+
+
+
+
+Stronger Lessons
+
+Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were
+	tender with you, and stood aside for you?
+Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject you, and
+	brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt,
+	or dispute the passage with you?
+
+
+
+
+A Prairie Sunset
+
+Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,
+The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power consign’d
+	for once to colors;
+The light, the general air possess’d by them--colors till now unknown,
+No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian--
+	North, South, all,
+Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.
+
+
+
+
+Twenty Years
+
+Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting:
+He shipp’d as green-hand boy, and sail’d away, (took some sudden,
+	vehement notion;)
+Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,
+While he the globe was circling round and round, --and now returns:
+How changed the place--all the old land-marks gone--the parents dead;
+(Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good--to settle--has a
+	well-fill’d purse--no spot will do but this;)
+The little boat that scull’d him from the sloop, now held in leash I see,
+I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand,
+I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass,
+I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded--the stout-strong frame,
+Dress’d in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:
+(Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the future?)
+
+
+
+
+Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
+
+A lesser proof than old Voltaire’s, yet greater,
+Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,
+To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,
+Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land and tide,
+Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,
+Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,
+A bunch of orange buds by mall from Florida.
+
+
+
+
+Twilight
+
+The soft voluptuous opiate shades,
+The sun just gone, the eager light dispell’d--(I too will soon be
+	gone, dispell’d,)
+A haze--nirwana--rest and night--oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
+
+You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
+And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;
+You tokens diminute and lorn--(not now the flush of May, or July
+	clover-bloom--no grain of August now;)
+You pallid banner-staves--you pennants valueless--you overstay’d of time,
+Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
+The faithfulest--hardiest--last.
+
+
+
+
+Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
+
+Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like
+	eagles’ talons,)
+But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some
+	summer--bursting forth,
+To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade--to nourishing fruit,
+Apples and grapes--the stalwart limbs of trees emerging--the fresh,
+	free, open air,
+And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.
+
+
+
+
+The Dead Emperor
+
+To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia,
+Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow--less for the Emperor,
+Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o’er many a salt sea mile,
+Mourning a good old man--a faithful shepherd, patriot.
+
+
+
+
+As the Greek’s Signal Flame
+
+As the Greek’s signal flame, by antique records told,
+Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory,
+Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero,
+With rosy tinge reddening the land he’d served,
+So I aloft from Mannahatta’s ship-fringed shore,
+Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.
+
+
+
+
+The Dismantled Ship
+
+In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
+On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,
+An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,
+After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and
+	hawser’d tight,
+Lies rusting, mouldering.
+
+
+
+
+Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
+
+Now precedent songs, farewell--by every name farewell,
+(Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons,
+From ups and downs--with intervals--from elder years, mid-age, or youth,)
+“In Cabin’d Ships, or Thee Old Cause or Poets to Come
+Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam,
+Or Beat! Beat! Drums! or To the Leaven’d Soil they Trod,
+Or Captain! My Captain! Kosmos, Quicksand Years, or Thoughts,
+Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more unspecified,
+From fibre heart of mine--from throat and tongue--(My life’s hot
+	pulsing blood,
+The personal urge and form for me--not merely paper, automatic type
+	and ink,)
+Each song of mine--each utterance in the past--having its long, long
+	history,
+Of life or death, or soldier’s wound, of country’s loss or safety,
+(O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared
+	indeed to that!
+What wretched shred e’en at the best of all!)
+
+
+
+
+An Evening Lull
+
+After a week of physical anguish,
+Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,
+Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,
+Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.
+
+
+
+
+Old Age’s Lambent Peaks
+
+The touch of flame--the illuminating fire--the loftiest look at last,
+O’er city, passion, sea--o’er prairie, mountain, wood--the earth itself,
+The airy, different, changing hues of all, in failing twilight,
+Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;
+The calmer sight--the golden setting, clear and broad:
+So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence
+	we scan,
+Bro’t out by them alone--so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before;
+The lights indeed from them--old age’s lambent peaks.
+
+
+
+
+After the Supper and Talk
+
+After the supper and talk--after the day is done,
+As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
+Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,
+(So hard for his hand to release those hands--no more will they meet,
+No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,
+A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)
+Shunning, postponing severance--seeking to ward off the last word
+	ever so little,
+E’en at the exit-door turning--charges superfluous calling back--
+	e’en as he descends the steps,
+Something to eke out a minute additional--shadows of nightfall deepening,
+Farewells, messages lessening--dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and form,
+Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness--loth, O so loth to depart!
+Garrulous to the very last.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Sail out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!
+
+Heave the anchor short!
+Raise main-sail and jib--steer forth,
+O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters,
+(I will not call it our concluding voyage,
+But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)
+Depart, depart from solid earth--no more returning to these shores,
+Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,
+Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,
+Sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me!
+
+
+
+
+Lingering Last Drops
+
+And whence and why come you?
+
+We know not whence, (was the answer,)
+We only know that we drift here with the rest,
+That we linger’d and lagg’d--but were wafted at last, and are now here,
+To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.
+
+
+
+
+Good-Bye My Fancy
+
+Good-bye my fancy--(I had a word to say,
+But ’tis not quite the time--The best of any man’s word or say,
+Is when its proper place arrives--and for its meaning,
+I keep mine till the last.)
+
+
+
+
+On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
+
+On, on the same, ye jocund twain!
+My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,
+Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in
+	one--combining all,
+My single soul--aims, confirmations, failures, joys--Nor single soul alone,
+I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America’s, haply humanity’s)--
+	the trial great, the victory great,
+A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,
+	the ancient, medieval,
+Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats--here
+	at the west a voice triumphant--justifying all,
+A gladsome pealing cry--a song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction;
+I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the
+	best sooner than the worst)--And now I chant old age,
+(My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,
+	autumn’s spread,
+I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses
+	winter-cool’d the same;)
+As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and love,
+wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,
+On, on ye jocund twain! continue on the same!
+
+
+
+
+MY 71st Year
+
+After surmounting three-score and ten,
+With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,
+My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing
+	passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4,
+As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or
+	haply after battle,
+To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,
+	with vital voice,
+Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.
+
+
+
+
+Apparitions
+
+A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages:
+(Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
+That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
+	non-realities.)
+
+
+
+
+The Pallid Wreath
+
+Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
+Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
+With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy,
+One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
+But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
+Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
+No, while memories subtly play--the past vivid as ever;
+For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
+Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
+So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
+It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.
+
+
+
+
+An Ended Day
+
+The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,
+The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;
+Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!
+
+
+
+
+Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s
+
+From east and west across the horizon’s edge,
+Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us:
+But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas--a battle-contest yet! bear
+	lively there!
+(Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!)
+Put on the old ship all her power to-day!
+Crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal studding-sails,
+Out challenge and defiance--flags and flaunting pennants added,
+As we take to the open--take to the deepest, freest waters.
+
+
+
+
+To the Pending Year
+
+Have I no weapon-word for thee--some message brief and fierce?
+(Have I fought out and done indeed the battle?) Is there no shot left,
+For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness?
+Nor for myself--my own rebellious self in thee?
+
+Down, down, proud gorge!--though choking thee;
+Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter;
+Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts.
+
+
+
+
+Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher
+
+I doubt it not--then more, far more;
+In each old song bequeath’d--in every noble page or text,
+(Different--something unreck’d before--some unsuspected author,)
+In every object, mountain, tree, and star--in every birth and life,
+As part of each--evolv’d from each--meaning, behind the ostent,
+A mystic cipher waits infolded.
+
+
+
+
+Long, Long Hence
+
+After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,
+Accumulations, rous’d love and joy and thought,
+Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers,
+Coating, compassing, covering--after ages’ and ages’ encrustations,
+Then only may these songs reach fruition.
+
+
+
+
+Bravo, Paris Exposition!
+
+Add to your show, before you close it, France,
+With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods,
+	machines and ores,
+Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid,
+(We grand-sons and great-grandsons do not forget your grandsires,)
+From fifty Nations and nebulous Nations, compacted, sent oversea to-day,
+America’s applause, love, memories and good-will.
+
+
+
+
+Interpolation Sounds
+
+Over and through the burial chant,
+Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests,
+To me come interpolation sounds not in the show--plainly to me,
+	crowding up the aisle and from the window,
+Of sudden battle’s hurry and harsh noises--war’s grim game to sight
+	and ear in earnest;
+The scout call’d up and forward--the general mounted and his aides
+	around him--the new-brought word--the instantaneous order issued;
+The rifle crack--the cannon thud--the rushing forth of men from their
+	tents;
+The clank of cavalry--the strange celerity of forming ranks--the
+	slender bugle note;
+The sound of horses’ hoofs departing--saddles, arms, accoutrements.
+
+
+
+
+To the Sun-Set Breeze
+
+Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,
+Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,
+Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing
+Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;
+Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better
+	than talk, book, art,
+(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the
+	rest--and this is of them,)
+So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within--thy soothing fingers
+	my face and hands,
+Thou, messenger--magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,
+(Distances balk’d--occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)
+I feel the sky, the prairies vast--I feel the mighty northern lakes,
+I feel the ocean and the forest--somehow I feel the globe itself
+	swift-swimming in space;
+Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone--haply from endless store,
+	God-sent,
+(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)
+Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and
+	cannot tell,
+Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all
+	Astronomy’s last refinement?
+Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?
+
+
+
+
+Old Chants
+
+An ancient song, reciting, ending,
+Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,
+Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,
+Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,
+And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.
+
+(Of many debts incalculable,
+Haply our New World’s chieftest debt is to old poems.)
+
+Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,
+Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,
+The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,
+The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,
+The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,
+Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,
+The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,
+The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,
+Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,
+The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,
+Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,
+As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,
+The great shadowy groups gathering around,
+Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,
+Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand
+	and word, ascending,
+Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent
+	with their music,
+Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,
+Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.
+
+
+
+
+A Christmas Greeting
+
+Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready;
+A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hall!
+(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
+	impedimentas,
+Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and
+	the faith;)
+To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee from us
+	the expectant eye,
+Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,
+The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,
+(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
+The height to be superb humanity.
+
+
+
+
+Sounds of the Winter
+
+Sounds of the winter too,
+Sunshine upon the mountains--many a distant strain
+From cheery railroad train--from nearer field, barn, house,
+The whispering air--even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,
+Children’s and women’s tones--rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
+An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
+Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.
+
+
+
+
+A Twilight Song
+
+As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,
+Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes--of the countless buried unknown
+	soldiers,
+Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s--the unreturn’d,
+The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the
+	deep-fill’d trenches
+Of gather’d from dead all America, North, South, East, West, whence
+	they came up,
+From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania,
+	Illinois, Ohio,
+From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas,
+(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless
+	flickering flames,
+Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising--I hear the
+	rhythmic tramp of the armies;)
+You million unwrit names all, all--you dark bequest from all the war,
+A special verse for you--a flash of duty long neglected--your mystic
+	roll strangely gather’d here,
+Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes,
+Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many
+	future year,
+Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,
+Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.
+
+
+
+
+When the Full-Grown Poet Came
+
+When the full-grown poet came,
+Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its
+	shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;
+But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled,
+	Nay he is mine alone;
+--Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each
+	by the hand;
+And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,
+Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,
+And wholly and joyously blends them.
+
+
+
+
+Osceola
+
+When his hour for death had come,
+He slowly rais’d himself from the bed on the floor,
+Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around
+	his waist,
+Call’d for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,)
+Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands.
+Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt--then lying down, resting
+	moment,
+Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand
+	to each and all,
+Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,)
+Fix’d his look on wife and little children--the last:
+
+(And here a line in memory of his name and death.)
+
+
+
+
+A Voice from Death
+
+A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power,
+With sudden, indescribable blow--towns drown’d--humanity by
+	thousands slain,
+The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge,
+Dash’d pell-mell by the blow--yet usher’d life continuing on,
+(Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris,
+A suffering woman saved--a baby safely born!)
+
+Although I come and unannounc’d, in horror and in pang,
+In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this
+	voice so solemn, strange,)
+I too a minister of Deity.
+
+Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee,
+We mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee,
+The fair, the strong, the good, the capable,
+The household wreck’d, the husband and the wife, the engulfed forger
+	in his forge,
+The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud,
+The gather’d thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never
+	found or gather’d.
+
+Then after burying, mourning the dead,
+(Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the
+	past, here new musing,)
+A day--a passing moment or an hour--America itself bends low,
+Silent, resign’d, submissive.
+
+War, death, cataclysm like this, America,
+Take deep to thy proud prosperous heart.
+
+E’en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime,
+The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love,
+From West and East, from South and North and over sea,
+Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on;
+And from within a thought and lesson yet.
+
+Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air!
+Thou waters that encompass us!
+Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep!
+Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all,
+Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant!
+Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm,
+Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy,
+How ill to e’er forget thee!
+
+For I too have forgotten,
+(Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture,
+	wealth, inventions, civilization,)
+Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye
+	mighty, elemental throes,
+In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy’d.
+
+
+
+
+A Persian Lesson
+
+For his o’erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,
+In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,
+On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,
+Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,
+Spoke to the young priests and students.
+
+“Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,
+Allah is all, all, all--immanent in every life and object,
+May-be at many and many-a-more removes--yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.
+
+“Has the estray wander’d far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?
+Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?
+Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
+The something never still’d--never entirely gone? the invisible need
+	of every seed?
+
+“It is the central urge in every atom,
+(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)
+To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,
+Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.”
+
+
+
+
+The Commonplace
+
+The commonplace I sing;
+How cheap is health! how cheap nobility!
+Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;
+The open air I sing, freedom, toleration,
+(Take here the mainest lesson--less from books--less from the schools,)
+The common day and night--the common earth and waters,
+Your farm--your work, trade, occupation,
+The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.
+
+
+
+
+“The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”
+
+The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas’d,
+The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,
+The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,
+Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute;
+(What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth’s
+	orbic scheme?)
+Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,
+The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.
+
+
+
+
+Mirages
+
+More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for;
+Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,
+Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in
+	plain sight,
+Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,
+(Account for it or not--credit or not--it is all true,
+And my mate there could tell you the like--we have often confab’d
+	about it,)
+People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,
+Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in corners,
+Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,
+Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,
+Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,
+Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
+Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,
+(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
+Show’d to me--just to the right in the sky-edge,
+Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.
+
+
+
+
+L. of G.’s Purport
+
+Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable
+	masses (even to expose them,)
+But add, fuse, complete, extend--and celebrate the immortal and the good.
+Haughty this song, its words and scope,
+To span vast realms of space and time,
+Evolution--the cumulative--growths and generations.
+
+Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued,
+Wandering, peering, dallying with all--war, peace, day and night
+	absorbing,
+Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,
+I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.
+
+I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:
+To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years--
+Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.
+
+
+
+
+The Unexpress’d
+
+How dare one say it?
+After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
+Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s--Homer, Shakspere--the long, long times’
+	thick dotted roads, areas,
+The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars--Nature’s pulses reap’d,
+All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,
+All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,
+All human lives, throats, wishes, brains--all experiences’ utterance;
+After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,
+Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print--something lacking,
+(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)
+
+
+
+
+Grand Is the Seen
+
+Grand is the seen, the light, to me--grand are the sky and stars,
+Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
+And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
+But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
+Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing
+	the sea,
+(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what
+	amount without thee?)
+More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
+More multiform far--more lasting thou than they.
+
+
+
+
+Unseen Buds
+
+Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,
+Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,
+Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,
+Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;
+Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,
+(On earth and in the sea--the universe--the stars there in the
+	heavens,)
+Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,
+And waiting ever more, forever more behind.
+
+
+
+
+Good-Bye My Fancy!
+
+Good-bye my Fancy!
+Farewell dear mate, dear love!
+I’m going away, I know not where,
+Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
+So Good-bye my Fancy.
+
+Now for my last--let me look back a moment;
+The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
+Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.
+
+Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;
+Delightful!--now separation--Good-bye my Fancy.
+
+Yet let me not be too hasty,
+Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended
+	into one;
+Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)
+If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,
+May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,
+May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who
+	knows?)
+May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning--so now finally,
+Good-bye--and hail! my Fancy.