Animals and Nature

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 a-blaze at the prow.

The Ox tamer

IN a faraway 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! 10
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;
See, how straight and square they stand on their legs--See, what
fine, sagacious eyes;
See, how 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.

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. 10

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; 10
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow,


my amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountainhawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrival'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! 20
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. 30


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; 40
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, equi


distant,
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.

In the Year 80 of The States,
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-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, 50
(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 now without check, with original energy.

Take my leaves, America! take them, South, and take them, North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
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! 60

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, 70

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; 80

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.) 90

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; 100
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 anything else.) 110

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 no real and permanent grandeur: 120
(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. 130

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! 140
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, 150
Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,
And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.


O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O warblings under the sun--usher'd, as now, or at noon, or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither!
I take to your reckless and composite chords--I 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. 160

I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and
joyfully singing.

And while I paused, 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, 170

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; 180

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 leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, 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? 190

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; 200

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,
Live words--words to the lands.

O the lands! interlink'd, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple
and grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of
those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus! 210

Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest
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! 220


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 the orators and the oratresses in public halls, 230

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 Sea-Side 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 of the
Narragansett Bay State, or of 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; 240

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

With me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on.

For your life, adhere to me!

Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;

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. 250



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.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth, 260

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
flatboat, 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. 270

See, pastures and forests in my poems--See, animals, wild and tame-See,
beyond the Kanzas, 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, from the Western
Sea to Manhattan;

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, wellbelov'd,
close-held by day and night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.

O Camerado close! 280
O you and me at last--and us two only.


O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something extatic 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 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, 10
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country,
With the surge for bass 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 mighty 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, 20
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;) 30
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, and 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! 40

In them these skies and airs--these mountain peaks--Shasta--Nevadas,

These huge, precipitous cliffs--this amplitude--these valleys grand-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 fetishes,

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

(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
scaffolds every where,) 50

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, 60

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 be 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, 70
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 wood-spirits' 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 Wasatch--or Idaho far, or Utah,
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding, 80
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 every where;
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the

whole world, 90
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, 100
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.

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; 10
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, 20
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. 30


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 tree--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! 40
I take your strong chords--I 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 sail'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; 50
Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and

triumph.

I sing 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. 60

Roots And Leaves Themselves Alone

ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the
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--breezes set from living shores out 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 blanches and trees. 10

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 us 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! 10
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; 20
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! see'st 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 medieval fill me!
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals: 30
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love,
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal 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, 40
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, 50
And Man and Art, with Nature fused again.

Tutti! for Earth and Heaven!
The Almighty Leader now for me, 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; 60
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. 70

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 dishevell'd.

I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden, 80
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 grey 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; 90
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;) 100
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; 110
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--extatic 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, 120
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, carolling free in the west,
Obeisant, sends his love. 130


(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, 140
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 clue I sought so long, 150
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; 160
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.

Poems Of Joys

O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O 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 rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.


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! 10
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 hill-sides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds--the moist fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, 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, 20
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 joy 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! 30
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 male and female!


O the presence of women! (I swear there is nothing more exquisite to
me than the mere presence of women;)

O for the girl, my mate! O for the happiness with my mate!

O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him
who, I fear, is indifferent to me.

O the streets of cities!

The flitting faces--the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot
tell how welcome they are to me.

O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the
coast!

O to continue and be employ'd there all my life! 40

O 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.

O it is I!

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 gaily, or returning in the afternoon-my
brood of tough boys accompaning 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. 50

Or, 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 joints 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.

Or, another time, mackerel-taking,

Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the
water for miles:

Or, another time, fishing for rock-fish, in Chesapeake Bay--I one of
the brown-faced crew:

Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with
braced body,

My left foot is on the gunwale--my right arm throws the coils of
slender rope, 60

In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
companions.

O boating on the rivers!

The voyage down the Niagara, (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
their 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! 70

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 general! 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. 80

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 see--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, now, 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, 90

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 joy!
My children and grand-children--my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.


O the ripen'd joy of womanhood!


O perfect happiness at last!


I am more than eighty years of age--my hair, too, is pure white--I am
the most venerable mother;

How clear is my mind! how all people draw nigh to me! 100

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;

O my soul, vibrated back to me, from them--from facts, sight,
hearing, touch, my phrenology, 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; 110

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 plow 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 the pleasure with trees!
The orchard--the forest--the oak, cedar, pine, pekan-tree, 120
The honey-locust, black-walnut, cottonwood, and magnolia.


O Death! the voyage 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 bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore!

To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep--to race naked along the
shore.

O to realize space!

The plenteousness of all--that there are no bounds; 130

To emerge, and be of the sky--of the sun and moon, and the flying
clouds, as one with them.

O the joy of a manly self-hood!

Personality--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.

Know'st thou the excellent joys of youth?

Joys of the dear companions, and of the merry word, and laughing
face?

Joys of the glad, light-beaming day--joy of the wide-breath'd
games? 140

Joy of sweet music--joy of the lighted ball-room, and the dancers?

Joy of the friendly, plenteous dinner--the strong carouse, and
drinking?


Yet, O my soul supreme!
Know'st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart--the tender, gloomy heart?
Joy of the solitary walk--the spirit bowed yet proud--the suffering


and the struggle?
The agonistic throes, the extasies--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. 150

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.


O me repellent and ugly!
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.

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 joy of suffering! 160
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, death, 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! 170


O to have my 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.

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 niqht 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!


Hiqh 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, 0 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! 0 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 niqht'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 miqht 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! 0 in vain!
0 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! 0 throbbing heart!
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the niqht.


0 past! 0 happy life! 0 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 clew! (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 seawaves?


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.

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 my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, 10
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet

and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best-


mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old


woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, 20
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
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;
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,

and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.


To me the sea is a continual miracle; 30
The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships,
with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

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 private, or public, or menial, or solitary--all these subordinate,
(I am eternally equal with the best--I am not subordinate;)
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 in These
States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada,

Me, wherever my life is lived, O to be
self-balanced for
contingencies!


O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as
the trees and animals do.

Leaves Of Grass. A Carol Of Harvest For 1867

A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.


A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.


For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee. 10


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 verse to seek, to see, 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, 20
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, 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 bulging, 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! To-day,
Thou art all over set in births and joys!
Thou groan'st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing


garment! 30
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--that giv'st a
million farms, and missest nothing!

Thou All-Acceptress--thou Hospitable--(thou only art hospitable, as
God is hospitable.) 40

When late I sang, sad was my voice;

Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and
smoke of conflict;

In the midst of the armies, 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 dead and wounded;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of War.


Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping
armies? 50

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

(Pass--pass, ye proud brigades!

So handsome, dress'd in blue--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!

Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill,
your salutes!

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! 60

O my land's maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and
the crutch!

Lo! your pallid army follow'd!)

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,

Shall 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; 70
But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at

peace--like pleasing phantoms,
Your dear 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.
80
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, indeed, 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; 90

Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or
East or West,
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. 100



I see where America, Mother of All,
Well-pleased, 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 their herby-perfumed breezes, 110
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, 120
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 pitch-fork;
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the ricecleanser.


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; 130
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.

Italian Music In Dakota

THROUGH the soft evening air enwrinding 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;) 10
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.

As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life

1
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.

2
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.

3
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.

4

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.

As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.


The conceits of the poets of other lands I 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 to-day as from forests of pine in the north, 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,
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite; 10
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, O Union!
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! 20
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--May-be 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, 30
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 thy western
continent alone;

Earth's résumé 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, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O helmsman--thou
carryest great companions, 40

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 western 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; 50

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; 60

I but thee name--thee prophecy--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, America--radiant, ablaze, swiftmoving,
fructifying all;


Thee! risen in thy potent cheerfulness and joy--thy 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 breeds 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;) 70

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain;

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest
material wealth and 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;

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 ultimata, (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 prophecy. 80

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 and
hence for what it is, boldly laid bare,

Open'd by thee to heaven's light, for benefit or bale. 90

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 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, 100
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;) 110
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,
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.

A Farm-Picture

THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;
And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII


I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Nomad Exquisite
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,
And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, comes flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.

Domination Of Black
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.
As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,
Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,
Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky
And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear
In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Progress Report

My need has frayed with time; you said it would.
It has; I can walk again across the flood
Of gold sil popples on the straw-gold hills
Under a deep Californian sky that expels
All truant clouds; watch squads of cattle graze
By the radio-telescope; blue-battered jays
Flash raucous squaking by my swivelling head
While squirrels sine-wave past over the dead
Oak-leaves, and not miss you_although I may
Admit that near the telescope yesterday
By a small bushcovered gully I blundered on
Five golden fox-cubs playing in the sun
And wished you had been there to see them play;
But that I only mention by the way.