Nature and Elements

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend; It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread. 7

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another

The poet is like the prince of the clouds Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking. 1

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.

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

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.

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

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.

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

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.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

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.

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.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

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.

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

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

When awful darkness and silence reign Over the great Gromboolian plain,

When storm-clouds brood on the towering heights