Leaves of Grass

Say on, sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear. I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, I swear to you they will understand you and justify you, The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all and is faithful to all, He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they, You shall be fully glorified in them. Youth, Day, Old Age and Night Youth, large, lusty, loving - youth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination? Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Song of the Universal 1 Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection. By every life a share or more or less, None born but it is born, conceal’d or unconceal’d the seed is waiting. 2 Lo! keen-eyed towering science, As from tall peaks the modern overlooking, Successive absolute fiats issuing. Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science, For it has history gather’d like husks around the globe, For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky. In spiral routes by long detours, (As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,) For it the partial to the permanent flowing, For it the real to the ideal tends. For it the mystic evolution, Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified. Forth from their masks, no matter what, From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears, Health to emerge and joy, joy universal. Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states, Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, Only the good is universal.

3 Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air. From imperfection’s murkiest cloud, Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, One flash of heaven’s glory. To fashion’s, custom’s discord, To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, From some far shore the final chorus sounding. O the blest eyes, the happy hearts, That see, that know the guiding thread so fine, Along the mighty labyrinth. 4 And thou America, For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality, For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. Thou too surroundest all, Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new, To the ideal tendest. The measure’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all, All eligible to all. All, all for immortality, Love like the light silently wrapping all, Nature’s amelioration blessing all, The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.

Give me O God to sing that thought, Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us, Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, Health, peace, salvation universal. Is it a dream? Nay but the lack of it the dream, And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream, And all the world a dream. Pioneers! O Pioneers! Come my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers! Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind, We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within, We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers! Colorado men are we, From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d, All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! O resistless restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers! Raise the mighty mother mistress, Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,) Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children, By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers! On and on the compact ranks, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers! O to die advancing on! Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d. Pioneers! O pioneers! All the pulses of the world, Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat, Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O pioneers! Life’s involv’d and varied pageants, All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers! All the hapless silent lovers, All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers! I too with my soul and body, We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb! Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers! These are of us, they are with us, All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers! O you daughters of the West! O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives! Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers! Minstrels latent on the prairies! (Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,) Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers! Not for delectations sweet, Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers! Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers! Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call - hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind, Swift! to the head of the army! - swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers! To You Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true soul and body appear before me. They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear. I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all, From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light, But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light, From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life, Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, What you have done returns already in mockeries, (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you, Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, I pursue you where none else has pursued you, Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me, The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you, There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you, No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you, I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency, Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself, Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted, Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way. France [the 18th Year of these States A great year and place A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer than any yet.

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings, Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils, Was not so desperate at the battues of death - was not so shock’d at the repeated fusillades of the guns. Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? Could I wish humanity different? Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? O Liberty! O mate for me! Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out in case of need, Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d, Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic, Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.

Hence I sign this salute over the sea, And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long, And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as for all lands, And I send these words to Paris with my love, And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them, For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it, O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them, O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march, It reaches hither, it swells me to Joyful madness, I will run transpose it in words, to justify I will yet sing a song for you ma femme. Myself and Mine Myself and mine gymnastic ever, To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children, To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people, And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer, (There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,) But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women. Not to chisel ornaments, But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and talking. Let me have my own way, Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws, Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation and conflict, I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy. (Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life? Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all your life? And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences, Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?) Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens, I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually. I give nothing as duties, What others give as duties I give as living impulses, (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions, Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections? I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do, I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself, I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. After me, vista! O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long, I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower, Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries. I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth, I perceive I have no time to lose. Year of Meteors [1859-60

Year of meteors! brooding year! I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad, I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia, (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d, I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;) I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States, The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their cargoes, The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold, Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give, And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of England! (Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your cortege of nobles? There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;) Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long, Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing; Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange

huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing - with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants, Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good - year of forebodings! Year of comets and meteors transient and strange - lo! even here one equally transient and strange! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, What am I myself but one of your meteors?

With Antecedents 1 With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon, With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk, With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent, With the fading kingdoms and kings over there, With the fading religions and priests, With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores, With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years, You and me arrived - America arrived and making this year, This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

2 O but it is not the years - it is I, it is You, We touch all laws and tally all antecedents, We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more, We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good, All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light, The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, Its sun, and its again, all swing around us. As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,) I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all, I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part. (Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past? Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.) I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews, I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demigod, I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception, I assert that all past days were what they must have been, And that they could no-how have been better than they were, And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is, And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.

3 In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past, And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time. I know that the past was great and the future will be great, And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake, your sake if you are he,) And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come.

A Broadway Pageant 1 Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, Ride to-day through Manhattan. Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold, In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers, Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching, But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.

When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements, When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love, When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love spit their salutes, When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze, When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colors, When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak, When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows, When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest, When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time, When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves forward visible, When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands of years answers, I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them. 2 Superb-faced Manhattan! Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes. To us, my city, Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between, To-day our Antipodes comes.

The Originatress comes, The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, The race of Brahma comes. See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession, As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us. For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only, Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead, The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable, The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients, Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in the pageant-procession.

Geography, the world, is in it, The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond, The coast you henceforth are facing - you Libertad! from your Western golden shores, The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are curiously here, The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama, Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman, The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors, Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all, Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains, From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China, From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from Malaysia, These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and are seiz’d by me, And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them, Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.

For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant, I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant, I chant the world on my Western sea, I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky, I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me, I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy, I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea-islands, My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes, My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind, Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh’d, Lives, works resumed - the object I know not - but the old, the Asiatic renew’d as it must be, Commencing from this day surrounded by the world. 3 And you Libertad of the world! You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of years, As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you, As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her eldest son to you. The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, The ring is circled, the journey is done, The box-lid is but perceptibly open’d, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box.

Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother, Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you are all, Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you, Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad. Here the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping? Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long? Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for reasons? They are justified, they are accomplish’d, they shall now be turn’d the other way also, to travel toward you thence, They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the shower’d halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive, Out from the patches of briers and blackberries, From the memories of the bird that chanted to me, From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears, From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease, From the myriad thence-arous’d words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any, From such as now they start the scene revisiting, As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok, When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore in some briers, Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. Shine! shine! shine! Pour down your warmth, great sun.’ While we bask, we two together. Two together! Winds blow south, or winds blow north, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, While we two keep together. Till of a sudden, May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest, Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appear’d again. And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or flitting from brier to brier by day, I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird, The solitary guest from Alabama.

Blow! blow! blow! Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore; I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me. Yes, when the stars glisten’d, All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake, Down almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears. He call’d on his mate, He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know. Yes my brother I know, The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note, For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding, Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows, Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts, The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen’d long and long. Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes, Following you my brother. Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close, But my love soothes not me, not me. Low hangs the moon, it rose late, It is lagging - O I think it is heavy with love, with love. O madly the sea pushes upon the land, With love, with love.

O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers? What is that little black thing I see there in the white? Loud! loud! loud! Loud I call to you, my love! High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, Surely you must know who is here, is here, You must know who I am, my love. Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? O it is the shape, the shape of my mate.’ O moon do not keep her from me any longer. Land! land! O land! Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if you only would, For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you. O throat! O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere! Pierce the woods, the earth, Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want. Shake out carols! Solitary here, the night’s carols! Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea! O reckless despairing carols.

But soft! sink low! Soft! let me just murmur, And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea, For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, So faint, I must be still, be still to listen, But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me. Hither my love! Here I am! here! With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you, This gentle call is for you my love, for you. Do not be decoy’d elsewhere, That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice, That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray, Those are the shadows of leaves. O darkness! O in vain! O I am very sick and sorrowful O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea! O troubled reflection in the sea! O throat! O throbbing heart! And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night. O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields, Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my mate no more, no more with me! We two together no more.

The aria sinking, All else continuing, the stars shining, The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing, With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning, On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling, The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching, The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying, The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting, The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing, The strange tears down the cheeks coursing, The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying, To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing, To the outsetting bard. Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake, And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you, Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me. O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) O if I am to have so much, let me have more! A word then, (for I will conquer it,) The word final, superior to all, Subtle, sent up - what is it? - I listen; Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves? Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea, Delaying not, hurrying not, Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak, Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death. Which I do not forget. But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach, With the thousand responsive songs at random, My own songs awaked from that hour, And with them the key, the word up from the waves, The word of the sweetest song and all songs, That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, (Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,) The sea whisper’d me. As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life

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. Tears

Tears! tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck’d in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head; O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch’d there on the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! O wild and dismal night storm, with wind - O belching and desperate! O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, But away at night as you fly, none looking - O then the unloosen’d ocean, Of tears! tears! tears! To the Man-of-War-Bird Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew’d on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended’st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee, (Myself a speck, a point on the world’s floating vast.)

Far, far at sea, After the night’s fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, The limpid spread of air cerulean, Thou also re-appearest. Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl’st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that lookist on Senegal, at morn America, That sport’st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had’st thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine! Aboard at a Ship’s Helm Aboard at a ship’s helm, A young steersman steering with care. Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, An ocean-bell - O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves. O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place. For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition, The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails, The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gayly and safe.

But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging. On the Beach at Night On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. The World below the Brine

The world below the brine, Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings, and pink turf, Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom, The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere, The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. On the Beach at Night Alone On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. Song for All Seas, All Ships 1 To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships - of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge.

Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay. Pick’d sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee, Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Indomitable, untamed as thee. (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing, Ever the stock preserv’d and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserv’d.) 2 Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, And all that went down doing their duty, Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all brave sailors, All seas, all ships. Patroling Barnegat

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing, (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?) Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering, A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting, That savage trinity warily watching. After the Sea-Ship

After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds, After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes, Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks, Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship, Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying, Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves, Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface, Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing, The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome under the sun, A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments, Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.

A Boston Ballad To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early, Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show. Clear the way there Jonathan! Way for the President’s marshal - way for the government cannon! Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions copiously tumbling.) I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle. How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town. A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping, Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless. Why this is indeed a show - it has called the dead out of the earth! The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see! Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! Cock’d hats of mothy mould - crutches made of mist! Arms in slings - old men leaning on young men’s shoulders. What troubles you Yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of bare gums? Does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your crutches for firelocks and level them? If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President’s marshal, If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.

For shame old maniacs - bring down those toss’d arms, and let your white hair be, Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows, See how well dress’d, see how orderly they conduct themselves. Worse and worse - can’t you stand it? are you retreating? Is this hour with the living too dead for you? Retreat then - pell-mell! To your graves - back - back to the hills old limpers! I do not think you belong here anyhow. But there is one thing that belongs here - shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of Boston? I will whisper it to the Mayor, he shall send a committee to England, They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault, Dig out King George’s coffin, unwrap him quick from the graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey, Find a swift Yankee clipper - here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper, Up with your anchor - shake out your sails - steer straight toward Boston bay. Now call for the President’s marshal again, bring out the government cannon, Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons. This centre-piece for them; Look, all orderly citizens - look from the windows, women!

The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay, Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull. You have got your revenge, old buster - the crown is come to its own, and more than its own. Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan - you are a made man from this day, You are mighty cute - and here is one of your bargains. Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States] Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings. O hope and faith! O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives! O many a sicken’d heart! Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh. And you, paid to defile the People - you liars, mark! Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts, For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages, For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh’d at in the breaking, Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall; The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.

But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the frighten’d monarchs come back, Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant. Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape, Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in scarlet folds, Whose face and eyes none may see, Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm, One finger crook’d pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears. Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men, The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud, And all these things bear fruits, and they are good. Those corpses of young men, Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc’d by the gray lead, Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality. They live in other young men O kings! They live in brothers again ready to defy you, They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted. Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed, Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning. Liberty, let others despair of you - I never despair of you. Is the house shut? is the master away? Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching, He will soon return, his messengers come anon. A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly - see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon - and from such a beginning! Gods Lover divine and perfect Comrade, Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. Thou, thou, the Ideal Man, Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in body and dilate in spirit, Be thou my God. O Death, (for Life has served its turn,) Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion, Be thou my God.

Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know, (To break the stagnant tie - thee, thee to free, O soul,) Be thou my God. All great ideas, the races’ aspirations, All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts, Be ye my Gods. Or Time and Space, Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous, Or some fair shape I viewing, worship, Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night, Be ye my Gods. Germs Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects, Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and half enclose with my hand, That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all. Thoughts

Of ownership - as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself; Of vista - suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey, (But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;) Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become supplied - and of what will yet be supplied, Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in what will yet be supplied. When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. Perfections Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls. O Me! O Life!

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here - that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. To a President All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn’d of Nature - of the politics of Nature you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not seen that only such as they are for these States, And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these States. I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women, I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth, I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners, I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest, I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these - all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon, See, hear, and am silent. To Rich Givers

What you give me I cheerfully accept, A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendezvous with my poems, A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as journey through the States, - why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them? For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe. The Dalliance of the Eagles Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull, A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, She hers, he his, pursuing. Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel] Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.

A Farm Picture Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding, And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away. A Child’s Amaze Silent and amazed even when a little boy, I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements, As contending against some being or influence. The Runner On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner, He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs, He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs, With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d. Beautiful Women Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful - but the old are more beautiful than the young. Mother and Babe I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, The sleeping mother and babe - hush’d, I study them long and long. Thought Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness; As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men. Visor’d A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself, Concealing her face, concealing her form, Changes and transformations every hour, every moment, Falling upon her even when she sleeps. Thought

Of justice - as If could be any thing but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors, As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions. Gliding O’er all Gliding o’er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul - not life alone, Death, many deaths I’ll sing. Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour Hast never come to thee an hour, A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? These eager business aims - books, politics, art, amours, To utter nothingness? Thought Of Equality - as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself - as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same. To Old Age I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea. Locations and Times Locations and times - what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home? Forms, colors, densities, odors - what is it in me that corresponds with them? Offerings A thousand perfect men and women appear, Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings. To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters, Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President? Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for reasons; (With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

First O Songs for a Prelude First O songs for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang, (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!) How you sprang - how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand, How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead, How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of soldiers,) How Manhattan drum-taps led. Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading, Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and turbulent city, Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, With her million children around her, suddenly, At dead of night, at news from the south, Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement. A shock electric, the night sustain’d it, Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads. From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways, Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.

To the drum-taps prompt, The young men falling in and arming, The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s hammer, tost aside with precipitation,) The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court, The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs, The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving; Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm, The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully, Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels, The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the sunrise cannon and again at sunset, Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves, (How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders! How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!) The blood of the city up-arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere, The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the public buildings and stores, The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother, (Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,) The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the

way, The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites, The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones, (Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence, Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;) All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming, The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines, The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now; War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away! War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to welcome it.

Mannahatta a-march - and it’s O to sing it well! It’s O for a manly life in the camp. And the sturdy artillery, The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns, Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for courtesies merely, Put in something now besides powder and wadding.) And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta, Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city, Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d amid all your children, But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta. Eighteen Sixty-One

Arm’d year - year of the struggle, No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year, Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano, But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying rifle on your shoulder, With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in the belt at your side, As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the continent, Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities, Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan, Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies, Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river, Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain top, Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year, Heard your determin’d voice launch’d forth again and again, Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year. Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! beat! drums! - blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows - through doors - burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet - no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums - so shrill you bugles blow. Beat! beat! drums! - blow! bugles! blow! Over the traffic of cities - over the rumble of wheels in the streets; Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds, No bargainers’ bargains by day - no brokers or speculators - would they continue? Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing? Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge? Then rattle quicker, heavier drums - you bugles wilder blow. Beat! beat! drums! - blow! bugles! blow! Make no parley - stop for no expostulation, Mind not the timid - mind not the weeper or prayer, Mind not the old man beseeching the young man, Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties, Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, So strong you thump O terrible drums - so loud you bugles blow. From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird

From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird, Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all, To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs, To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then, To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;) Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas to sing theirs, To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs, To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere; To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,) The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable, And then the song of each member of these States. Song of the Banner at Daybreak Poet: O A new song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind’s voice and that of the drum, By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, On the ground where father and child stand, In the upward air where their eyes turn, Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you? Words no more, for hearken and see, My song is there in the open air, and I must sing, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. I’ll weave the chord and twine in, Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life, I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz, (As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future, Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!) I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy, Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. Pennant: Come up here, bard, bard, Come up here, soul, soul, Come up here, dear little child, To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light. Child: Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger? And what does it say to me all the while?

Father: Nothing my babe you see in the sky, And nothing at all to you it says - but look you my babe, Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money- shops opening, And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods; These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these! How envied by all the earth. Poet: Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high, On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels, On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land, The great steady wind from west or west-by-south, Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters. But I am not the sea nor the red sun, I am not the wind with girlish laughter, Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes, Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death, But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land, Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings, And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Aloft there flapping and flapping.

Child: O father it is alive - it is full of people - it has children, O now it seems to me it is talking to its children, I hear it - it talks to me - O it is wonderful! O it stretches - it spreads and runs so fast - O my father, It is so broad it covers the whole sky. Father: Cease, cease, my foolish babe, What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much ’t displeases me; Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft, But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d houses. Banner and Pennant: Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan, To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan, Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all - and yet we know not why, For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing, Only flapping in the wind?

Poet: I hear and see not strips of cloth alone, I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry, I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty! I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing, I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then, I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height, I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities with wealth incalculable, I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns, I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish’d, I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives, I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering, I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern plantation, and again to California; Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn’d wages, See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States, (and many more to come,) See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out; Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant shaped like a sword, Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance - and now the halyards have rais’d it, Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner, Discarding peace over all the sea and land.

Banner and Pennant: Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone, We may be terror and carnage, and are so now, Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten,) Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city, But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours, And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small, And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours, Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours - while we over all, Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles, the capitals, The forty millions of people, - O bard! in life and death supreme, We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above, Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you, This song to the soul of one poor little child. Child: O my father I like not the houses, They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money, But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like, That pennant I would be and must be.

Father: Child of mine you fill me with anguish, To be that pennant would be too fearful, Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever, It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing, Forward to stand in front of wars - and O, such wars! - what have you to do with them? With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?

Banner: Demons and death then I sing, Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war, And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children, Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea, And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke, And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines, And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south, And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore, and my Western shore the same, And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi with bends and chutes, And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri, The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom, Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all, Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole, No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound, But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more, Croaking like crows here in the wind.

Poet: My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute, I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded, My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand, Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner! Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them, You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money, May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast;) O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships, Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues - but you as henceforth I see you, Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars,) Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun, measuring the sky, (Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child, While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;) O you up there! O pennant!

where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious, Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me, So loved - O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night! Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all - (absolute owner of all) - O banner and pennant! I too leave the rest - great as it is, it is nothing - houses, machines are nothing - I see them not, I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, sing you only, Flapping up there in the wind.

Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps 1 Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me, Long I roam’d amid the woods of the north, long I watch’d Niagara pouring, I travel’d the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross’d the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus, I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea, I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm, I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves, I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over, I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds, Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!) Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow’d after the lightning, Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; These, and such as these, I, elate, saw - saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful, All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me, Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.

2 ’Twas well, O soul - ’twas a good preparation you gave me, Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill, Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us, Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities, Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring, Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed inexhaustible?) What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of the mountains and sea? What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen? Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds? Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage, Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front - Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain’d; What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here, How it climbs with daring feet and hands - how it dashes! How the true thunder bellows after the lightning - how bright the flashes of lightning! How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! (Yet a mournful wall and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark, In a lull of the deafening confusion.)

3 Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities! Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good, My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment, Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads through farms, only half satisfied, One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me, Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; The cities I loved so well I abandon’d and left, I sped to the certainties suitable to me, Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature’s dauntlessness, I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only, I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire - on the water and air waited long; But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted, I have witness’d the true lightning, I have witness’d my cities electric, I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise, Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds, No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea. Virginia - The West

The noble sire fallen on evil days, I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing, (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,) The insane knife toward the Mother of All. The noble son on sinewy feet advancing, I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio’s waters and of Indiana, To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring, Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders. Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking, As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive against me, and why seek my life? When you yourself forever provide to defend me? For you provided me Washington - and now these also. City of Ships

City of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here, All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam! City of wharves and stores - city of tall facades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city - mettlesome, mad, extravagant city! Spring up O city - not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! Fear not - submit to no models but your own O city! Behold me - incarnate me as I have incarnated you! I have rejected nothing you offer’d me - whom you adopted I have adopted, Good or bad I never question you - I love all - I do not condemn any thing, I chant and celebrate all that is yours - yet peace no more, In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine, War, red war is my song through your streets, O city! The Centenarian’s Story

[Volunteer of 1861-2, at Washington Park, Brooklyn, assisting the Centenarian.] Give me your hand old Revolutionary, The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,) Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years, You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done, Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me. Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means, On the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising, There is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow, Do you hear the officers giving their orders? Do you hear the clank of the muskets? Why what comes over you now old man? Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively? The troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles, Around them at hand the well-drest friends and the women, While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down, Green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze, O’er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between. But drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters, Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!

As wending the crowds now part and disperse - but we old man, Not for nothing have I brought you hither - we must remain, You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell. [The Centenarian] When I clutch’d your hand it was not with terror, But suddenly pouring about me here on every side, And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran, And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see south and south- east and south-west, Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods, And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over) came again and suddenly raged, As eighty-five years agone no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends, But a battle which I took part in myself - aye, long ago as it is, I took part in it, Walking then this hilltop, this same ground. Aye, this is the ground, My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled from graves, The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear, Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted, I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay, I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes; Here we lay encamp’d, it was this time in summer also.

As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration, It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here, By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held up his unsheath’d sword, It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army. ’Twas a bold act then - the English war-ships had just arrived, We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor, And the transports swarming with soldiers. A few days more and they landed, and then the battle. Twenty thousand were brought against us, A veteran force furnish’d with good artillery. I tell not now the whole of the battle, But one brigade early in the forenoon order’d forward to engage the red-coats, Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d, And how long and well it stood confronting death. Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting death? It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known personally to the General.

Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters, Till of a sudden unlook’d for by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night, The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing their guns, That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy’s mercy. The General watch’d them from this hill, They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment, Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle, But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them! It sickens me yet, that slaughter! I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General. I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. Meanwhile the British manœuvr’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle, But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle. We fought the fight in detachments, Sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the luck was against us, Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back to the works on this hill, Till we turn’d menacing here, and then he left us. That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, Few return’d, nearly all remain in Brooklyn.

That and here my General’s first battle, No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude with applause, Nobody clapp’d hands here then. But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain, Wearied that night we lay foil’d and sullen, While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord off against us encamp’d, Quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wineglasses together over their victory. So dull and damp and another day, But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing, Silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my General retreated. I saw him at the river-side, Down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation; My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d over, And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for the last time. Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom, Many no doubt thought of capitulation. But when my General pass’d me, As he stood in his boat and look’d toward the coming sun, I saw something different from capitulation. [Terminus] Enough, the Centenarian’s story ends, The two, the past and present, have interchanged, I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.

And is this the ground Washington trod? And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross’d, As resolute in defeat as other generals in their proudest triumphs? I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward, I must preserve that look as it beam’d on you rivers of Brooklyn. See - as the annual round returns the phantoms return, It is the 27th of August and the British have landed, The battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke Washington’s face, The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to intercept the enemy, They are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them, Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag, Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds. In death, defeat, and sisters’, mothers’ tears. Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable than your owners supposed; In the midst of you stands an encampment very old, Stands forever the camp of that dead brigade. Cavalry Crossing a Ford

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun - hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford - while, Scarlet and blue and snowy white, The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind. Bivouac on a Mountain Side I see before me now a traveling army halting, Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer, Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high, Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen, The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the mountain, The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering, And over all the sky - the sky! far, far out of reach, studded, breaking out, the eternal stars. An Army Corps on the March

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance, With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley, The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on, Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun - the dust-cover’d men, In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground, With artillery interspers’d - the wheels rumble, the horses sweat, As the army corps advances. By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame By the bivouac’s fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow - but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline, The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence, Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving, The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground, By the bivouac’s fitful flame. Come Up from the Fields Father Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines, (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?) Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds, Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. Down in the fields all prospers well, But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call. And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away. Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling, She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap. Open the envelope quickly, O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d, O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul! All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only, Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me, Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans. Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs, The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,) See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better. Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,) While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be better, She with thin form presently drest in black, By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son. Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade - not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely

meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness, Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating, Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building, We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building, ’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital, Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made, Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps, And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke, By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down, At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,) I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,) Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all, Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead, Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, odor of blood, The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d, Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating, An

occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls, The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches, These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor, Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in; But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me, Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness, Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks, The unknown road still marching.

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying, Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. Curious I halt and silent stand, Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you my dear comrade? Then to the second I step - and who are you my child and darling? Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming? Then to the third - a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; Young man I think I know you - I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies. As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods

As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods, To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,) I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could understand,) The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose - yet this sign left, On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering, Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life, Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street, Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes the inscription rude in Virginia’s woods, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. Not the Pilot Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled; Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long, By deserts parch’d, snows chill’d, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination, More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose march for these States, For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence. Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me

Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me! Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me, Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself, Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled? And sullen hymns of defeat? The Wound-Dresser 1 An old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war, But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself, To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

2 O maidens and young men I love and that love me, What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust, In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge, Enter the captur’d works - yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade, Pass and are gone they fade - I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys, (Both I remember well - many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.) But in silence, in dreams’ projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)