Summary of your 'study carrel'
==============================

This is a summary of your Distant Reader 'study carrel'.

The Distant Reader harvested & cached your content into a
collection/corpus. It then applied sets of natural language
processing and text mining against the collection. The results of
this process was reduced to a database file -- a 'study carrel'.
The study carrel can then be queried, thus bringing light
specific characteristics for your collection. These
characteristics can help you summarize the collection as well as
enumerate things you might want to investigate more closely.

This report is a terse narrative report, and when processing 
is complete you will be linked to a more complete narrative
report. 

                               Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>


Number of items in the collection; 'How big is my corpus?'
----------------------------------------------------------
416


Average length of all items measured in words; "More or less, how big is each item?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
315


Average readability score of all items (0 = difficult; 100 = easy)
------------------------------------------------------------------
8


Top 50 statistically significant keywords; "What is my collection about?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
31	BOOK
8	year
8	Thou
7	man
7	life
7	good
6	love
6	day
5	thee
5	earth
5	God
4	woman
4	state
4	long
4	America
3	sound
3	ship
3	land
3	friend
3	death
3	close
3	States
3	Hand
2	word
2	time
2	thy
2	terrible
2	stand
2	soul
2	sail
2	place
2	past
2	old
2	night
2	moon
2	joy
2	hand
2	flag
2	face
2	drop
2	coffin
2	city
2	certain
2	captain
2	Waves
2	Thy
2	Thought
2	Thee
2	Stranger
2	South


Top 50 lemmatized nouns; "What is discussed?"
---------------------------------------------
405	man
327	day
271	life
260	soul
230	earth
229	night
202	sea
195	land
191	hand
190	woman
189	death
186	love
180	song
179	time
161	face
154	word
143	body
142	city
137	ship
135	year
132	world
128	eye
127	thing
125	war
121	child
119	sun
118	voice
109	one
109	joy
109	air
105	water
103	nothing
101	rest
100	house
96	star
95	shore
95	mother
94	other
92	side
91	head
89	field
86	poem
85	heart
84	part
84	arm
83	work
82	place
81	wood
80	light
79	tree


Top 50 proper nouns; "What are the names of persons or places?"
--------------------------------------------------------------
104	thou
83	Thou
72	America
63	God
49	States
44	Thee
33	Old
32	Thy
29	South
29	North
27	Lo
26	West
26	Manhattan
26	BOOK
25	heaven
24	World
22	Time
21	ye
21	Nature
20	New
20	Mother
19	lo
18	Pioneers
17	O
17	Mississippi
17	Libertad
16	thee
16	mans
16	President
15	Behold
15	Asia
14	Space
14	Paumanok
14	Mannahatta
14	California
13	west
13	Union
13	Sea
13	France
13	Europe
13	East
12	India
12	City
11	filld
11	Washington
10	Texas
10	Pacific
10	Night
10	Missouri
10	Love


Top 50 personal pronouns nouns; "To whom are things referred?"
-------------------------------------------------------------
2913	i
1535	you
1005	me
791	it
479	they
443	them
329	we
301	he
194	him
187	myself
116	she
106	us
102	thee
78	itself
63	themselves
52	yourself
48	her
42	himself
32	mine
17	thyself
17	ourselves
11	herself
8	one
7	theirs
6	yours
6	ours
3	his
2	ye
1	thy
1	hers
1	blither


Top 50 lemmatized verbs; "What do things do?"
---------------------------------------------
2825	be
588	have
546	see
397	do
276	come
246	know
226	go
196	hear
182	give
145	think
144	love
137	make
135	pass
134	stand
125	sing
119	take
112	look
108	rise
102	leave
100	say
99	hold
88	fall
86	wait
86	let
86	bear
85	walk
69	tell
69	bring
65	grow
63	sit
61	lie
58	return
57	sleep
57	live
56	become
55	find
54	feel
50	call
50	appear
49	die
48	turn
47	sail
47	put
46	follow
45	singe
45	serve
45	move
45	lose
44	seek
44	fill


Top 50 lemmatized adjectives and adverbs; "How are things described?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
935	not
293	now
262	long
247	old
247	more
243	so
233	here
200	great
184	well
179	up
174	good
164	ever
163	only
158	there
158	again
145	then
141	yet
132	never
129	out
127	own
124	far
124	as
120	young
116	last
104	too
104	same
102	strong
101	other
101	many
95	new
94	little
92	full
88	forth
88	dead
87	high
87	alone
84	much
84	away
83	down
83	all
82	sweet
80	white
80	on
78	just
76	beautiful
76	back
74	perfect
72	always
69	still
66	also


Top 50 lemmatized superlative adjectives; "How are things described to the extreme?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
52	good
17	great
13	most
13	least
10	dr
8	deep
6	late
4	strong
4	nigh
4	near
4	lofty
4	large
4	high
4	common
3	wild
3	temp
3	sweet
3	superb
3	small
3	proud
3	noble
3	mean
3	look
3	happy
3	free
3	fit
3	dear
3	ample
2	young
2	true
2	stern
2	sharp
2	shallow
2	old
2	new
2	minute
2	loud
2	heavy
2	full
2	friendly
2	farth
2	faithful
2	costly
2	brave
2	bad
1	wise
1	wealthy
1	weak
1	topmost
1	tiny


Top 50 lemmatized superlative adverbs; "How do things do to the extreme?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
43	most
7	well
1	yieldest
1	worst
1	swellest
1	soon
1	laughest
1	farthest


Top 50 Internet domains; "What Webbed places are alluded to in this corpus?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Top 50 URLs; "What is hyperlinked from this corpus?"
----------------------------------------------------


Top 50 email addresses; "Who are you gonna call?"
-------------------------------------------------


Top 50 positive assertions; "What sentences are in the shape of noun-verb-noun?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3	body is sacred
3	earth does not
3	war is over
2	child went forth
2	love was not
2	soul is always
1	air waited long
1	bodies are words
1	body does not
1	body is not
1	body was too
1	body were not
1	children come hurried
1	cities are here
1	city seen soldiers
1	day be eligible
1	day come white
1	day gives place
1	day holds back
1	day is not
1	day make not
1	days take on
1	days were far
1	death is beautiful
1	earth been always
1	earth having wanderd
1	earth is beautiful
1	earth is gross
1	earth is just
1	earth is not
1	earth is rude
1	earth is solid
1	earth is swiftly
1	earth make contributions
1	eye grown dim
1	eyes are almost
1	eyes are closed
1	eyes give more
1	eyes have time
1	face is ash
1	face is clearer
1	face is cold
1	face is flavord
1	face is pale
1	face is white
1	face looks forth
1	faces bear testimony
1	hand bringing up
1	hand has completely
1	hands make fast


Top 50 negative assertions; "What sentences are in the shape of noun-verb-no|not-noun?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1	body is not more
1	day is not such
1	life is not short
1	love is not over
1	love was not really
1	men have not yet
1	one is no better
1	soul is not more
1	things are not dismissd
1	world does not so


Sizes of items; "Measures in words, how big is each item?"
----------------------------------------------------------
16122	chapter-028
3980	chapter-211
3160	chapter-026
2957	chapter-099
2738	chapter-087
2734	chapter-089
2409	chapter-259
2395	chapter-101
2283	chapter-255
2273	chapter-032
2223	chapter-206
2219	chapter-105
1991	chapter-097
1814	chapter-091
1701	chapter-166
1589	chapter-262
1565	chapter-120
1549	chapter-095
1515	chapter-253
1497	chapter-107
1476	chapter-283
1307	chapter-215
1205	chapter-093
1203	chapter-170
1079	chapter-103
947	chapter-118
927	chapter-287
822	chapter-111
781	chapter-288
771	chapter-121
746	chapter-182
741	chapter-222
709	chapter-325
678	chapter-346
666	chapter-034
659	chapter-162
642	chapter-112
619	chapter-031
608	chapter-167
581	chapter-257
573	chapter-216
562	chapter-313
554	chapter-219
534	chapter-048
534	chapter-266
510	chapter-007
507	chapter-132
507	chapter-184
503	chapter-312
496	chapter-033
490	chapter-116
479	chapter-223
477	chapter-110
460	chapter-049
421	chapter-133
419	chapter-114
414	chapter-220
405	chapter-290
403	chapter-175
399	chapter-241
398	chapter-188
389	chapter-311
386	chapter-225
382	chapter-221
382	chapter-407
381	chapter-310
380	chapter-051
371	chapter-176
352	chapter-115
350	chapter-177
341	chapter-113
333	chapter-244
331	chapter-293
302	chapter-224
301	chapter-214
299	chapter-270
282	chapter-035
281	chapter-245
279	chapter-227
278	chapter-291
278	chapter-317
272	chapter-003
272	chapter-125
263	chapter-053
260	chapter-289
257	chapter-286
254	chapter-128
252	chapter-056
250	chapter-185
247	chapter-234
241	chapter-301
239	chapter-226
237	chapter-292
233	chapter-201
230	chapter-316
227	chapter-038
227	chapter-186
223	chapter-164
223	chapter-348
216	chapter-277
215	chapter-306
213	chapter-237
212	chapter-267
212	chapter-294
208	chapter-163
208	chapter-207
205	chapter-218
200	chapter-400
195	chapter-401
193	chapter-178
193	chapter-347
191	chapter-404
190	chapter-052
190	chapter-217
190	chapter-228
189	chapter-389
187	chapter-063
187	chapter-169
184	chapter-123
183	chapter-204
183	chapter-365
182	chapter-239
179	chapter-246
178	chapter-276
177	chapter-047
173	chapter-411
172	chapter-235
171	chapter-229
169	chapter-002
169	chapter-055
169	chapter-355
167	chapter-408
166	chapter-373
166	chapter-416
165	chapter-064
165	chapter-126
165	chapter-142
165	chapter-197
164	chapter-013
162	chapter-006
162	chapter-381
161	chapter-351
159	chapter-018
158	chapter-036
158	chapter-189
158	chapter-370
154	chapter-278
153	chapter-041
152	chapter-058
150	chapter-296
148	chapter-054
148	chapter-127
147	chapter-297
147	chapter-319
144	chapter-179
144	chapter-203
142	chapter-232
142	chapter-268
142	chapter-356
142	chapter-361
141	chapter-248
140	chapter-230
139	chapter-247
138	chapter-384
134	chapter-165
134	chapter-272
133	chapter-196
133	chapter-264
132	chapter-358
130	chapter-059
129	chapter-135
128	chapter-129
127	chapter-130
127	chapter-368
126	chapter-122
126	chapter-202
126	chapter-233
125	chapter-140
125	chapter-302
124	chapter-295
124	chapter-367
124	chapter-412
123	chapter-199
123	chapter-236
122	chapter-168
121	chapter-124
121	chapter-304
119	chapter-392
118	chapter-077
118	chapter-298
118	chapter-300
117	chapter-174
117	chapter-299
115	chapter-044
114	chapter-406
113	chapter-015
112	chapter-057
111	chapter-050
111	chapter-061
110	chapter-134
110	chapter-284
110	chapter-314
110	chapter-399
109	chapter-042
109	chapter-305
109	chapter-352
107	chapter-060
107	chapter-067
106	chapter-160
106	chapter-231
105	chapter-315
104	chapter-022
104	chapter-208
103	chapter-331
101	chapter-030
101	chapter-043
101	chapter-357
100	chapter-144
100	chapter-402
99	chapter-353
99	chapter-360
98	chapter-065
97	chapter-265
96	chapter-137
95	chapter-066
95	chapter-136
94	chapter-085
94	chapter-303
94	chapter-413
93	chapter-068
93	chapter-309
93	chapter-349
93	chapter-405
92	chapter-172
92	chapter-187
91	chapter-274
91	chapter-414
90	chapter-138
89	chapter-073
88	chapter-005
88	chapter-171
87	chapter-383
87	chapter-394
86	chapter-009
86	chapter-345
85	chapter-062
84	chapter-200
83	chapter-190
83	chapter-195
83	chapter-386
82	chapter-011
82	chapter-350
81	chapter-078
80	chapter-143
78	chapter-001
78	chapter-082
78	chapter-324
77	chapter-173
76	chapter-069
76	chapter-249
76	chapter-410
75	chapter-250
75	chapter-275
74	chapter-271
73	chapter-021
73	chapter-075
73	chapter-198
73	chapter-279
73	chapter-330
73	chapter-403
73	chapter-415
72	chapter-070
72	chapter-374
72	chapter-390
71	chapter-076
71	chapter-180
70	chapter-269
70	chapter-376
70	chapter-395
69	chapter-183
69	chapter-318
69	chapter-354
68	chapter-010
67	chapter-074
65	chapter-242
65	chapter-362
64	chapter-072
64	chapter-181
64	chapter-377
64	chapter-398
63	chapter-016
63	chapter-141
63	chapter-409
61	chapter-014
61	chapter-372
60	chapter-037
60	chapter-081
60	chapter-359
59	chapter-079
59	chapter-084
59	chapter-193
57	chapter-083
57	chapter-108
57	chapter-238
57	chapter-260
57	chapter-336
57	chapter-396
56	chapter-341
56	chapter-379
55	chapter-363
55	chapter-369
54	chapter-080
54	chapter-328
54	chapter-335
53	chapter-273
52	chapter-251
52	chapter-333
51	chapter-337
51	chapter-344
50	chapter-039
50	chapter-212
50	chapter-371
49	chapter-008
49	chapter-045
49	chapter-329
48	chapter-240
47	chapter-017
47	chapter-243
47	chapter-378
47	chapter-387
46	chapter-380
45	chapter-019
45	chapter-307
45	chapter-338
44	chapter-191
44	chapter-280
44	chapter-320
43	chapter-339
43	chapter-388
42	chapter-012
42	chapter-145
42	chapter-342
42	chapter-397
41	chapter-071
40	chapter-194
40	chapter-209
38	chapter-004
38	chapter-040
38	chapter-334
37	chapter-148
36	chapter-155
36	chapter-158
36	chapter-192
35	chapter-020
34	chapter-151
34	chapter-382
33	chapter-153
33	chapter-154
33	chapter-364
33	chapter-366
32	chapter-146
32	chapter-156
31	chapter-147
30	chapter-281
30	chapter-327
29	chapter-023
29	chapter-152
29	chapter-391
28	chapter-332
28	chapter-343
27	chapter-375
26	chapter-149
26	chapter-150
24	chapter-393
23	chapter-322
23	chapter-340
22	chapter-157
22	chapter-159
22	chapter-323
21	chapter-321
20	chapter-024
15	chapter-139
7	chapter-285
6	chapter-205
6	chapter-263
5	chapter-029
5	chapter-109
5	chapter-131
5	chapter-308
5	chapter-326
5	chapter-385
4	chapter-119
4	chapter-161
4	chapter-213
3	chapter-046
	chapter-025
	chapter-027
	chapter-086
	chapter-088
	chapter-090
	chapter-092
	chapter-094
	chapter-096
	chapter-098
	chapter-100
	chapter-102
	chapter-104
	chapter-106
	chapter-117
	chapter-210
	chapter-252
	chapter-254
	chapter-256
	chapter-258
	chapter-261
	chapter-282


Readability of items; "How difficult is each item to read?"
-----------------------------------------------------------
99.0	chapter-271
99.0	chapter-303
99.0	chapter-321
99.0	chapter-387
98.0	chapter-060
98.0	chapter-077
98.0	chapter-178
98.0	chapter-194
98.0	chapter-264
97.0	chapter-181
97.0	chapter-193
97.0	chapter-307
97.0	chapter-361
96.0	chapter-036
96.0	chapter-043
96.0	chapter-208
96.0	chapter-405
95.0	chapter-083
95.0	chapter-122
95.0	chapter-148
95.0	chapter-157
95.0	chapter-198
95.0	chapter-416
94.0	chapter-009
94.0	chapter-041
94.0	chapter-124
94.0	chapter-164
94.0	chapter-250
94.0	chapter-267
94.0	chapter-352
94.0	chapter-371
93.0	chapter-035
93.0	chapter-059
93.0	chapter-063
93.0	chapter-085
93.0	chapter-132
93.0	chapter-140
93.0	chapter-141
93.0	chapter-175
93.0	chapter-245
93.0	chapter-279
93.0	chapter-294
93.0	chapter-376
93.0	chapter-392
92.0	chapter-001
92.0	chapter-006
92.0	chapter-074
92.0	chapter-120
92.0	chapter-123
92.0	chapter-166
92.0	chapter-169
92.0	chapter-335
92.0	chapter-394
91.0	chapter-075
91.0	chapter-143
91.0	chapter-189
91.0	chapter-244
91.0	chapter-287
91.0	chapter-300
91.0	chapter-328
90.0	chapter-038
90.0	chapter-046
90.0	chapter-065
90.0	chapter-079
90.0	chapter-091
90.0	chapter-154
90.0	chapter-185
90.0	chapter-263
90.0	chapter-277
90.0	chapter-299
90.0	chapter-366
90.0	chapter-377
90.0	chapter-406
89.0	chapter-048
89.0	chapter-051
89.0	chapter-113
89.0	chapter-168
89.0	chapter-182
89.0	chapter-206
89.0	chapter-209
89.0	chapter-223
89.0	chapter-229
89.0	chapter-247
89.0	chapter-257
89.0	chapter-273
89.0	chapter-374
89.0	chapter-395
88.0	chapter-019
88.0	chapter-028
88.0	chapter-133
88.0	chapter-176
88.0	chapter-246
88.0	chapter-259
88.0	chapter-346
87.0	chapter-003
87.0	chapter-039
87.0	chapter-066
87.0	chapter-097
87.0	chapter-116
87.0	chapter-121
87.0	chapter-145
87.0	chapter-149
87.0	chapter-167
87.0	chapter-196
87.0	chapter-215
87.0	chapter-262
87.0	chapter-286
87.0	chapter-288
87.0	chapter-311
87.0	chapter-357
87.0	chapter-381
86.0	chapter-010
86.0	chapter-013
86.0	chapter-024
86.0	chapter-087
86.0	chapter-158
86.0	chapter-170
86.0	chapter-177
86.0	chapter-219
86.0	chapter-231
86.0	chapter-240
86.0	chapter-275
86.0	chapter-316
86.0	chapter-318
86.0	chapter-414
85.0	chapter-004
85.0	chapter-033
85.0	chapter-057
85.0	chapter-089
85.0	chapter-114
85.0	chapter-115
85.0	chapter-125
85.0	chapter-179
85.0	chapter-186
85.0	chapter-220
85.0	chapter-255
85.0	chapter-290
85.0	chapter-313
85.0	chapter-341
85.0	chapter-355
85.0	chapter-368
85.0	chapter-400
85.0	chapter-407
84.0	chapter-021
84.0	chapter-026
84.0	chapter-032
84.0	chapter-042
84.0	chapter-049
84.0	chapter-050
84.0	chapter-108
84.0	chapter-190
84.0	chapter-199
84.0	chapter-224
84.0	chapter-232
84.0	chapter-268
84.0	chapter-278
84.0	chapter-329
83.0	chapter-002
83.0	chapter-008
83.0	chapter-014
83.0	chapter-056
83.0	chapter-105
83.0	chapter-128
83.0	chapter-134
83.0	chapter-162
83.0	chapter-235
83.0	chapter-281
83.0	chapter-325
83.0	chapter-359
83.0	chapter-365
82.0	chapter-110
82.0	chapter-111
82.0	chapter-135
82.0	chapter-187
82.0	chapter-188
82.0	chapter-217
82.0	chapter-236
82.0	chapter-249
82.0	chapter-276
82.0	chapter-380
82.0	chapter-383
82.0	chapter-386
81.0	chapter-017
81.0	chapter-022
81.0	chapter-082
81.0	chapter-099
81.0	chapter-107
81.0	chapter-160
81.0	chapter-216
81.0	chapter-234
81.0	chapter-241
81.0	chapter-253
81.0	chapter-293
81.0	chapter-305
81.0	chapter-331
81.0	chapter-332
81.0	chapter-353
80.0	chapter-030
80.0	chapter-101
80.0	chapter-197
80.0	chapter-356
80.0	chapter-373
80.0	chapter-379
80.0	chapter-382
79.0	chapter-011
79.0	chapter-093
79.0	chapter-142
79.0	chapter-147
79.0	chapter-155
79.0	chapter-184
79.0	chapter-211
79.0	chapter-221
79.0	chapter-225
79.0	chapter-310
79.0	chapter-324
79.0	chapter-336
79.0	chapter-402
78.0	chapter-007
78.0	chapter-081
78.0	chapter-103
78.0	chapter-191
78.0	chapter-201
78.0	chapter-214
78.0	chapter-226
78.0	chapter-227
78.0	chapter-274
78.0	chapter-284
78.0	chapter-289
78.0	chapter-295
78.0	chapter-317
78.0	chapter-343
78.0	chapter-348
78.0	chapter-358
78.0	chapter-404
78.0	chapter-408
77.0	chapter-047
77.0	chapter-061
77.0	chapter-112
77.0	chapter-118
77.0	chapter-213
77.0	chapter-230
77.0	chapter-266
77.0	chapter-283
77.0	chapter-363
77.0	chapter-367
77.0	chapter-413
76.0	chapter-012
76.0	chapter-031
76.0	chapter-052
76.0	chapter-127
76.0	chapter-150
76.0	chapter-174
76.0	chapter-183
76.0	chapter-200
76.0	chapter-202
76.0	chapter-203
76.0	chapter-218
76.0	chapter-301
76.0	chapter-323
76.0	chapter-351
76.0	chapter-412
75.0	chapter-054
75.0	chapter-138
75.0	chapter-171
75.0	chapter-172
75.0	chapter-389
74.0	chapter-020
74.0	chapter-034
74.0	chapter-053
74.0	chapter-067
74.0	chapter-070
74.0	chapter-080
74.0	chapter-362
74.0	chapter-369
74.0	chapter-375
74.0	chapter-410
73.0	chapter-272
73.0	chapter-306
73.0	chapter-360
73.0	chapter-409
72.0	chapter-016
72.0	chapter-062
72.0	chapter-129
72.0	chapter-173
72.0	chapter-270
72.0	chapter-339
72.0	chapter-347
72.0	chapter-384
72.0	chapter-403
71.0	chapter-055
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71.0	chapter-192
71.0	chapter-228
71.0	chapter-297
71.0	chapter-338
71.0	chapter-393
70.0	chapter-126
70.0	chapter-153
70.0	chapter-370
69.0	chapter-044
69.0	chapter-068
69.0	chapter-084
69.0	chapter-144
69.0	chapter-204
69.0	chapter-212
69.0	chapter-319
69.0	chapter-327
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69.0	chapter-372
68.0	chapter-058
68.0	chapter-291
68.0	chapter-349
68.0	chapter-398
68.0	chapter-411
67.0	chapter-163
67.0	chapter-265
67.0	chapter-342
67.0	chapter-364
66.0	chapter-333
66.0	chapter-401
65.0	chapter-146
65.0	chapter-156
65.0	chapter-260
65.0	chapter-334
65.0	chapter-396
64.0	chapter-018
64.0	chapter-136
64.0	chapter-195
64.0	chapter-237
64.0	chapter-239
64.0	chapter-242
64.0	chapter-292
64.0	chapter-350
63.0	chapter-180
62.0	chapter-045
62.0	chapter-165
62.0	chapter-205
62.0	chapter-340
61.0	chapter-095
61.0	chapter-137
61.0	chapter-159
61.0	chapter-314
60.0	chapter-130
60.0	chapter-222
60.0	chapter-248
59.0	chapter-073
59.0	chapter-078
59.0	chapter-315
58.0	chapter-345
57.0	chapter-151
57.0	chapter-304
57.0	chapter-391
56.0	chapter-139
55.0	chapter-069
53.0	chapter-296
50.0	chapter-280
49.0	chapter-233
49.0	chapter-243
49.0	chapter-378
43.0	chapter-152
43.0	chapter-415
41.0	chapter-312
35.0	chapter-344
35.0	chapter-397
27.0	chapter-251
26.0	chapter-354
25.0	chapter-390
24.0	chapter-330
120.0	chapter-119
120.0	chapter-161
119.0	chapter-385
118.0	chapter-285
109.0	chapter-322
109.0	chapter-388
105.0	chapter-320
104.0	chapter-023
104.0	chapter-298
103.0	chapter-309
102.0	chapter-029
102.0	chapter-076
102.0	chapter-109
102.0	chapter-131
102.0	chapter-302
102.0	chapter-308
102.0	chapter-326
101.0	chapter-040
101.0	chapter-064
101.0	chapter-071
100.0	chapter-207
100.0	chapter-238
100.0	chapter-269
10.0	chapter-037
0.0	chapter-005
-24.0	chapter-015
-16.0	chapter-399
	chapter-025
	chapter-027
	chapter-086
	chapter-088
	chapter-090
	chapter-092
	chapter-094
	chapter-096
	chapter-098
	chapter-100
	chapter-102
	chapter-104
	chapter-106
	chapter-117
	chapter-210
	chapter-252
	chapter-254
	chapter-256
	chapter-258
	chapter-261
	chapter-282


Item summaries; "In a narrative form, how can each item be abstracted?"
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chapter-001	

chapter-002	As I ponderd in silence, As I ponderd in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands, As to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal songs, And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, Knowst thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, The making of perfect soldiers. Be it so, then I answerd, I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferrd and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers.

chapter-003	In cabind ships at sea, In cabind ships at sea, With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves, Or some lone bark buoyd on the dense marine, Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails, By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read, We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny, You not a reminiscence of the land alone, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purposd I know not Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves, Chant on, sail on, bear oer the boundless blue from me to every sea, This song for mariners and all their ships.

chapter-004	To Foreign Lands I heard that you askd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

chapter-005	To a Historian You who celebrate bygones, Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself, Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests, I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself in his own rights, Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself,) Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be, I project the history of the future.

chapter-006	To thee old cause! To thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,) These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee. (A war O soldiers not for itself alone, Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.) Thou orb of many orbs! Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre! Around the idea of thee the war revolving, With all its angry and vehement play of causes, These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one, Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee, As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself, Around the idea of thee.

chapter-007	Passing the hues and objects of the world, To glean eidolons. Issuing eidolons. But really build eidolons. The substance of an artists mood or savans studies long, To fashion his eidolon. In its eidolon. In its eidolon. In its eidolon. In its eidolon. In its eidolon. The old, old urge, eidolons. To-days eidolons. Joining eidolons. Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidolons everlasting. Exalte, rapt, ecstatic, The mighty earth-eidolon. Filld with eidolons only. The true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, The entities of entities, eidolons. Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet, Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them, God and eidolons. Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations, Thy mates, eidolons. Thy body permanent, The body lurking there within thy body, An image, an eidolon. A round full-orbd eidolon.

chapter-008	For him I sing, For him I sing, I raise the present on the past, (As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,) With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws, To make himself by them the law unto himself.

chapter-009	When I Read the Book When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a mans life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

chapter-010	Beginning My Studies Beginning my studies the first step pleasd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleasd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wishd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

chapter-011	Beginners How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,) How dear and dreadful they are to the earth, How they inure to themselves as much as to any--what a paradox appears their age, How people respond to them, yet know them not, How there is something relentless in their fate all times, How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.

chapter-012	To the States To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.

chapter-013	On Journeys Through the States On journeys through the States we start, (Ay through the world, urged by these songs, Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,) We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all. We have watchd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on, And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much? We dwell a while in every city and town, We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the Mississippi, and the Southern States, We confer on equal terms with each of the States, We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear, Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic, And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return, And may be just as much as the seasons.

chapter-014	

chapter-015	Me Imperturbe Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada, Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

chapter-016	Savantism Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close, always obligated, Thither hours, months, years--thither trades, compacts, establishments, even the most minute, Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates; Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant, As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.

chapter-017	The Ship Starting Lo, the unbounded sea, On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails. The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately-below emulous waves press forward, They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.

chapter-018	I Hear America Singing I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutters song, the ploughboys on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

chapter-019	What Place Is Besieged? What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal, And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

chapter-020	Still though the one I sing, Still though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality, I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! quenchless, indispensable fire!)

chapter-021	Shut Not Your Doors Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-filld shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, A book separate, not linkd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

chapter-022	Poets to come! Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.

chapter-023	

chapter-024	

chapter-025	
chapter-026	Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World. Here lands female and male, I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love, Nor land nor man or woman without religion.) But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble, life return in the body and the soul, Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet? Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west Land of the ocean shores! The great womens land! Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor, See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,

chapter-027	
chapter-028	Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies I know I shall not pass like a childs carlacue cut with a burnt Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with

chapter-029	

chapter-030	To the Garden the World To the garden the world anew ascending, Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber, The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again, Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous, My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous, Existing I peer and penetrate still, Content with the present, content with the past, By my side or back of me Eve following, Or in front, and I following her just the same.

chapter-031	Singing the song of procreation, Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people, Singing the bedfellows song, (O resistless yearning! O for any and each the body correlative attracting! O for you whoever you are your correlative body! From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them, Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting, The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching, The divine list for myself or you or for any one making, O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless, From the long sustaind kiss upon the mouth or bosom, From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms, From the night a moment I emerging flitting out, Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,

chapter-032	The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mothers This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see. A mans body at auction, This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be Have you ever loved the body of a woman? Have you ever loved the body of a man? And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and fathers, young mans, young womans poems, O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

chapter-033	A Woman Waits for Me A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, right man were lacking. Sex contains all, bodies, souls, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, followd persons of the earth, Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex, Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers. Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women, I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that those women. I draw you close to me, you women, It is I, you women, I make my way, I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings, I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now, I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,

chapter-034	The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me, men carry, Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts man, the body of the earth, The boys longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what The limpid liquid within the young man, The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats, the young man all colord, red, ashamed, angry; The continence of vegetables, birds, animals, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent, The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate

chapter-035	One hour to madness and joy! One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not! (What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?) O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man! O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children, I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.) O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me a determind man. O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all To be absolvd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and To drive free! to love free! To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me! To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom! With one brief hour of madness and joy.

chapter-036	Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, Whispering I love you, before long I die, I have traveld a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once lookd on you, For I feard I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have lookd, we are safe, Return in peace to the ocean my love, I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated, Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.

chapter-037	Ages and ages returning at intervals, Ages and ages returning at intervals, Undestroyd, wandering immortal, Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, I, chanter of Adamic songs, Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling, Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering myself, Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex, Offspring of my loins.

chapter-038	We two, how long we were foold, We two, how long we were foold, Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes, We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark, We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks, We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side, We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any, We are two fishes swimming in the sea together, We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings, We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals, We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down, We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets, We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling

chapter-039	O hymen! O hymen! O hymenee! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus? O why sting me for a swift moment only? Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease? Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would soon certainly kill me?

chapter-040	I Am He That Aches with Love I am he that aches with amorous love; Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? So the body of me to all I meet or know.

chapter-041	Native Moments Native moments--when you come upon me--ah you are here now, Give me now libidinous joys only, Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank, To-day I go consort with Natures darlings, to-night too, I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers, The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low person for my dearest friend, He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemnd by others for deeds done, I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions? O you shunnd persons, I at least do not shun you, I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

chapter-042	Once I Passd Through a Populous City Once I passd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detaind me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together--all else has long been forgotten by me, I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me, Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

chapter-043	I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I passd the church, Winds of autumn, as I walkd the woods at dusk I heard your longstretchd sighs up above so mournful, I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last night under my ear.

chapter-044	Facing west from Californias shores, Facing west from Californias shores, Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar, Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled; For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere, From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero, From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands, Long having wanderd since, round the earth having wanderd, Now I face home again, very pleasd and joyous, (But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?)

chapter-045	As Adam early in the morning, As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refreshd with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

chapter-046	

chapter-047	In paths untrodden, In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publishd, from the pleasures, profits, conformities, Which too long I was offering to feed my soul, Clear to me now standards not yet publishd, clear to me that my soul, That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades, Here by myself away from the clank of the world, Tallying and talkd to here by tongues aromatic, No longer abashd, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would not dare elsewhere,) Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest, Resolvd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment, Projecting them along that substantial life, To tell the secret my nights and days, To celebrate the need of comrades.

chapter-048	Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death, Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers, I think it must be for death, I think it must be for death, Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer, (I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,) Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my breast! Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves! Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating, are folded inseparably together, you love and death are, But you will last very long. But you will last very long.

chapter-049	Without one thing all will be useless, Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? Put me down and depart on your way. But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or With the comrades long-dwelling kiss or the new husbands kiss, For I am the new husband and I am the comrade. For thus merely touching you is enough, is best, And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally. But these leaves conning you con at peril, For these leaves and me you will not understand, They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you. Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) Therefore release me and depart on your way.

chapter-050	For You, O Democracy Come, I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each others necks, By the love of comrades, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

chapter-051	These I singing in spring collect for lovers, Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates, Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them, And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside, (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this calamus-root shall, Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each; But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve, I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.

chapter-052	Not heaving from my ribbd breast only, Not heaving from my ribbd breast only, Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself, Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs, Not in many an oath and promise broken, Not in my wilful and savage souls volition, Not in the subtle nourishment of the air, Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists, Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease, Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only, Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in the wilds, Not in husky pantings through clinchd teeth, Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words, Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep, Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day, Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you

chapter-053	Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, hold not, surround us and pervade us, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

chapter-054	The Base of All Metaphysics And now gentlemen, A word I give to remain in your memories and minds, As base and finale too for all metaphysics. (So to the students the old professor, At the close of his crowded course.) Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems, Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato, And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having studied long, I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems, See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see, Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see, The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend, Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents, Of city for city and land for land.

chapter-055	Recorders ages hence, Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me, Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend the lovers portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pourd it forth, Who often walkd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive away from one he lovd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lovd might Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, Who oft as he saunterd the streets curvd with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

chapter-056	When I Heard at the Close of the Day When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receivd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for I was not happy, But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refreshd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourishd me more, and the beautiful day passd well, my friend, And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly the cool night, And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy.

chapter-057	Are you the new person drawn toward me? Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloyd satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me? Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?

chapter-058	Roots and leaves themselves alone are these, Roots and leaves themselves alone are these, Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines, Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun is risen, Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living sea, to you O sailors! Frost-mellowd berries and Third-month twigs offerd fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up, Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms, If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bring form, color, perfume, to you, If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees.

chapter-059	Not heat flames up and consumes, Not heat flames up and consumes, Not sea-waves hurry in and out, Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightly along white down-balls of myriads of seeds, Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may; Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consuming, burning for his love whom I love, O none more than I hurrying in and out; Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting clouds, are borne through the open air, Any more than my soul is borne through the open air, Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you.

chapter-060	Trickle drops! Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving! O drops of me! trickle, slow drops, Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops, From wounds made to free you whence you were prisond, From my face, from my forehead and lips, From my breast, from within where I was conceald, press forth red drops, confession drops, Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops, Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten, Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet, Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops, Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.

chapter-061	City of Orgies City of orgies, walks and joys, City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spectacles, repay me, Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves, Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with goods in them, Nor to converse with learnd persons, or bear my share in the soiree or feast; Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love, Offering response to my own--these repay me, Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.

chapter-062	Behold This Swarthy Face Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes, This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck, My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm; Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightly on the lips with robust love, And I on the crossing of the street or on the ships deck give a kiss in return, We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea, We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.

chapter-063	I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonderd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it and twined around it a little moss, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,

chapter-064	To a Stranger Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recalld as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only, You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

chapter-065	This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful, It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or talking other dialects, And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become attached to them as I do to men in my own lands, O I know we should be brethren and lovers, I know I should be happy with them.

chapter-066	I Hear It Was Charged Against Me I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? destruction of them?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades.

chapter-067	The Prairie-Grass Dividing The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing, I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following, Those with a never-quelld audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors, Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constraind, never obedient, Those of inland America.

chapter-068	When I Peruse the Conquerd Fame When I peruse the conquerd fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house, But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them, How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away filld with the bitterest envy.

chapter-069	

chapter-070	A promise to California, A promise to California, Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon; Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust American love, For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you, inland, and along the Western sea; For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I will also.

chapter-071	Here the Frailest Leaves of Me Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

chapter-072	

chapter-073	A Glimpse A glimpse through an interstice caught, Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarkd seated in a corner, Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

chapter-074	A leaf for hand in hand; A leaf for hand in hand; You natural persons old and young! You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi! You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! You twain! and all processions moving along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.

chapter-075	Earth, my likeness, Earth, my likeness, Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth, For an athlete is enamourd of me, and I of him, But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible to burst forth, I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.

chapter-076	I Dreamd in a Dream I dreamd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dreamd that was the new city of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.

chapter-077	What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand? What think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-modeld, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that envelops me? Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, The one to remain hung on the others neck and passionately kissd him, While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.

chapter-078	To the East and to the West, To the East and to the West, To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania, To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love, These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men, I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb friendship, exalte, previously unknown, Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.

chapter-079	Sometimes with One I Love Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturnd love, But now I think there is no unreturnd love, the pay is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returnd, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

chapter-080	

chapter-081	Fast-anchord eternal O love! Fast-anchord eternal O love! O woman I love! O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied or another born, Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man, O sharer of my roving life.

chapter-082	Among the Multitude Among the men and women the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am, Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me. Ah lover and perfect equal, I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections, And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

chapter-083	O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you, O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you, As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

chapter-084	That Shadow My Likeness That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering, How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits, How often I question and doubt whether that is really me; But among my lovers and caroling these songs, O I never doubt whether that is really me.

chapter-085	Full of Life Now Full of life now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States, To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence, To you yet unborn these, seeking you. When you read these I that was visible am become invisible, Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade; (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)

chapter-086	
chapter-087	Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about What are the mountains calld that rise so high in the mists? Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west, What do you hear Walt Whitman? I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse, I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems, I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki land-lockd in its I see the long river-stripes of the earth, I see the defective human bodies of the earth, The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women. And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth. You dim-descended, black, divine-sould African, large, fine-headed,

chapter-088	
chapter-089	Strong and content I travel the open road. O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers? What gives me to be free to a womans and mans good-will? The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of But I know that they go toward the best--toward something great. or man or woman come forth! Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

chapter-090	
chapter-091	Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also face Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the I too many and many a time crossd the river of old, Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left The men and women I saw were all near to me, The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you River and sunset and scallop-edgd waves of flood-tide?

chapter-092	
chapter-093	Now list to my mornings romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer, A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother, How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field, The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark, He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race. All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science. The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer, these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.

chapter-094	
chapter-095	Always the vast slope draind by the Southern sea, inseparable with The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main, the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming, In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees, the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising; incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works, Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks southward but returning northward early in the spring, In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more

chapter-096	
chapter-097	A Song of Joys O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all! O the joy of my soul leaning poisd on itself, receiving identity through My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, Knowist thou the excellent joys of youth? Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face? Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space? For not lifes joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death! O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys! A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

chapter-098	
chapter-099	The swing of their axes on the square-hewd log shaping it toward Do you think a great city endures? A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretchd Where the city stands that is belovd by these, and loves them in Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands. Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea, Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and Shapes of turbulent manly cities, Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,

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chapter-101	Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb, Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner Freedom, Not only all the world of works, trade, products, You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the new ones, One stately house shall be the music house, Shall ever here confront the laboring many, I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here, For the eternal real life to come. Thy offspring towering eer so high, yet higher Thee above all towering, For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands; Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South, But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinterd staff, None separate from thee--henceforth One only, we and thou, We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee; Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and States in thee! our very lives in thee!

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chapter-103	Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense. My time has ended, my term has come. Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine, Our time, our term has come. But come from Natures long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence, love and aught that comes from life and love, the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space, Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic, Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs, In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees imperial, In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even vital air. Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,

chapter-104	
chapter-105	good as your brother or dearest friend, If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Souls of men and women! Have you reckond them for your trade or farm-work? the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high? I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are, Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men steam-saws, the great mills and factories, butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice, In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things, In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best, Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother, When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they of men and women like you.

chapter-106	
chapter-107	A song of the rolling earth, and of words according, (In the best poems re-appears the body, mans or womans, Air, soil, water, fire--those are words, The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth, The masters know the earths words and use them more than audible words. Amelioration is one of the earths words, Underneath these possessing words that never fall. Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words, Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth, I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, pile the words of the earth! I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall,

chapter-108	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.

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chapter-110	Song of the Universal Sing me the universal. Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection. keen-eyed towering science, For it the real to the ideal tends. Health to emerge and joy, joy universal. Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, And thou America, 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 measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, Love like the light silently wrapping all, Give me O God to sing that thought, Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, Health, peace, salvation universal. Is it a dream? Nay but the lack of it the dream, And failing it lifes lore and wealth a dream, And all the world a dream.

chapter-111	We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Have the elder races halted? Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Raise the mighty mother mistress, With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filld, 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 filld. Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, We to-days procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, to the head of the army!--swift!

chapter-112	I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-colord light, of gold-colord light, From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, mockeries, what is their return?) mockeries, what is their return?) 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, I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing

chapter-113	France [the 18th Year of these States A great year and place I walkd the shores of my Eastern sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single 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? Here too, though long represt, can never be destroyd, Hence I sign this salute over the sea, But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long, 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, I will run transpose it in words, to justify

chapter-114	To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people, Not to chisel ornaments, But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous 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 what are you secretly guilty of all your life? Will you turn aside all your life? your life? Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?) Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens, continually. I give nothing as duties, What others give as duties I give as living impulses, Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,

chapter-115	Year of meteors! Year of meteors! I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling 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 Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give, And you would I sing, fair stripling! 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, to sing; Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would Year of comets and meteors transient and strange--lo! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,

chapter-116	With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, sending itself ahead countless years to come. We touch all laws and tally all antecedents, We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, Its sun, and its again, all swing around us. I assert that all past days were what they must have been, 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. And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time. And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, and days, or ever will come.

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chapter-118	Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements, When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves To-day our Antipodes comes. The race of Brahma comes. The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond, The coast you henceforth are facing--you Libertad! Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! I chant the world on my Western sea, I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky, I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those Lives, works resumed--the object I know not--but the old, the Asiatic And you Libertad of the world! As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you, Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad. They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.

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chapter-120	From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, And every day the she-bird crouchd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, Day come white, or night come black, Blow up sea-winds along Paumanoks shore; Listend to keep, to sing, now translating the notes, You must know who I am, my love. Solitary here, the nights carols! Carols of lonesome love! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea! O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea! The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing, Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves? Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arousd childs heart,

chapter-121	Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, I too but signify at the utmost a little washd-up drift, A few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. 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, I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy. Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.

chapter-122	In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suckd 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, crouchd 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 unloosend ocean, tears! tears! tears! tears! tears! tears! tears!

chapter-123	Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renewd on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst, 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 worlds floating vast.) Far, far at sea, After the nights 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, Thou also re-appearest. To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furlst thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, That sportst amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine!

chapter-124	Aboard at a ships helm, Aboard at a ships helm, A young steersman steering with care. Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rockd 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.

chapter-125	Watching the east, the autumn sky. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Weep not, child, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? (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, Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

chapter-126	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, 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.

chapter-127	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 spannd, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

chapter-128	Song for All Seas, All Ships Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships--of waves spreading and spreading And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Ever the stock preservd and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preservd.) Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, oer all brave sailors, All seas, all ships.

chapter-129	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.

chapter-130	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.

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chapter-132	To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early, Way for the Presidents marshal--way for the government cannon! Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town. The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see! What troubles you Yankee phantoms? For shame old maniacs--bring down those tossd arms, and let your To your graves--back--back to the hills old limpers! 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, Boston bay. Now call for the Presidents marshal again, bring out the government cannon, Look, all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women! The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that You have got your revenge, old buster--the crown is come to its own,

chapter-133	Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, The People scornd the ferocity of kings. Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in One finger crookd pointed high over the top, like the head of a 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, Those corpses of young men, Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts piercd by They live in other young men O kings! They live in brothers again ready to defy you, in its turn to bear seed, Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, Liberty, let others despair of you--I never despair of you. He will soon return, his messengers come anon.

chapter-134	A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly--see this it sends back, (who is it? Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slaves eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkards breath, unwholesome eaters face, venerealees 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!

chapter-135	Lover divine and perfect Comrade, Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, Thou, thou, the Ideal Man, Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in body and dilate in spirit, O Death, (for Life has served its turn,) Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion, 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. Be thou my God. Be thou my God. Be thou my God. All great ideas, the races aspirations, All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts, 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. Be ye my Gods. Be ye my Gods.

chapter-136	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, 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.

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chapter-138	When I heard the learnd astronomer, When I heard the learnd 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 wanderd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Lookd up in perfect silence at the stars.

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chapter-140	O life! O life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filld 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 renewd, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see 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.

chapter-141	To a President All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learnd of Nature--of the politics of Nature you have not learnd 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.

chapter-142	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 killd to preserve the lives of the rest, I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.

chapter-143	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 travelers 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.

chapter-144	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 oer the river poisd, the twain yet one, a moments 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.

chapter-145	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 calld Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.

chapter-146	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.

chapter-147	A Childs 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.

chapter-148	The Runner On a flat road runs the well-traind 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 raisd.

chapter-149	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.

chapter-150	Mother and Babe I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, The sleeping mother and babe--hushd, I study them long and long.

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chapter-152	Visord 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.

chapter-153	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.

chapter-154	Gliding oer all, through all, Gliding oer 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 Ill sing.

chapter-155	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?

chapter-156	Thought Of Equality--as if it harmd 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.

chapter-157	To Old Age I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea.

chapter-158	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

chapter-159	Offerings A thousand perfect men and women appear, Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings.

chapter-160	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? 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.)

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chapter-162	Lightly strike on the stretchd tympanum pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of 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 Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, Manhattan arming. Armd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark The blood of the city up-armd! The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, (Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence, be it weeks, months, or years, an armd race is advancing to The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns, And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta, Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,

chapter-163	No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year, But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the 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 Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year, Heard your determind voice launchd forth again and again, Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lippd cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

chapter-164	Drums! 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. 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? Then rattle quicker, heavier drums--you bugles wilder blow. beat! beat! beat! beat! beat! beat! drums!--blow! drums!--blow! drums!--blow! bugles! bugles! bugles! blow! blow! blow! So strong you thump O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow.

chapter-165	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.

chapter-166	By the banners voice and childs voice and seas voice and fathers voice, On the ground where father and child stand, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. With the banner and pennant a-flapping. Come up here, dear little child, On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land, And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft, Banner and Pennant: Banner and Pennant: O my father I like not the houses, But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like, Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea, Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute, My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) owner of all)--O banner and pennant!

chapter-167	Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devourd what the earth gave me, Long I roamd amid the woods of the north, long I watchd Niagara pouring, I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds, Heard the continuous thunder as it bellowd after the lightning, Twas well, O soul--twas a good preparation you gave me, Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us, How the true thunder bellows after the lightning--how bright the How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities! I have witnessd the true lightning, I have witnessd my cities electric, I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,

chapter-168	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 Ohios 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.

chapter-169	City of ships! City of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful sharp-bowd 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 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!

chapter-170	You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done, Only hear that approval of hands! As eighty-five years agone no mere parade receivd with applause of friends, But a battle which I took part in myself--aye, long ago as it is, I By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held up Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it marchd, It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemys mercy. The General watchd them from this hill, I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General. That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand That and here my Generals first battle, My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all passd over, Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn!

chapter-171	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.

chapter-172	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 scatterd 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.

chapter-173	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-coverd men, In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground, With artillery interspersd--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat, As the army corps advances.

chapter-174	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 bivouacs fitful flame. By the bivouacs fitful flame. By the bivouacs fitful flame.

chapter-175	Come Up from the Fields Father Come up from the fields father, heres a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, heres a letter from thy dear son. Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellisd vines, (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? 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 daughters call. And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away. O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mothers soul! At present low, but will soon be better. See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better. But the mother needs to be better, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

chapter-176	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, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, comrade--not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and 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 I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,

chapter-177	A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building, And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,) I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngsters face is white as a lily,) odor of blood, The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also filld, death-spasm sweating, the torches, These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor, 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.

chapter-178	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-grayd hair, Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling? Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the

chapter-179	As toilsome I wanderd Virginias woods, As toilsome I wanderd Virginias woods, To the music of rustling leaves kickd by my feet, (for twas autumn,) I markd 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 scrawld and naild on the tree by the grave, 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 soldiers grave, comes the inscription rude in Virginias woods, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.

chapter-180	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 parchd, snows chilld, 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.

chapter-181	Year that trembled and reeld beneath me! Year that trembled and reeld beneath me! Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darkend 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?

chapter-182	An old man bending I come among new faces, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be filld with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filld again. With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, The crushd head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) (Come sweet death! Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curvd neck and side falling head, I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, (Many a soldiers loving arms about this neck have crossd and rested,

chapter-183	Long, too long America, Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learnd from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (For who except myself has yet conceivd what your children en-masse

chapter-184	Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city, Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets, Yet giving to make me glutted, enrichd of soul, you give me forever faces; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan! Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of (The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flushd The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

chapter-185	Dirge for Two Veterans On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, Down a new-made double grave. Lo, the moon ascending, Up from the east the silvery round moon, Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon, Immense and silent moon. And I hear the sound of coming full-keyd bugles, I hear the great drums pounding, And every blow of the great convulsive drums, Two veterans son and father dropt together, And the double grave awaits them.) Now nearer blow the bugles, And the drums strike more convulsive, And the daylight oer the pavement quite has faded, And the strong dead-march enwraps me. O strong dead-march you please me! O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me! O my veterans passing to burial! The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music, And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,

chapter-186	Be not disheartend, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet, Those who love each other shall become invincible, They shall yet make Columbia victorious. Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious, You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth. No danger shall balk Columbias lovers, If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one. One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourians comrade, From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come, It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection, The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly, The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, The continuance of Equality shall be comrades. These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron, with the love of lovers tie you.

chapter-187	I saw old General at bay, I saw old General at bay, (Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,) His small force was now completely hemmd in, in his works, He calld for volunteers to run the enemys lines, a desperate emergency, I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or three were selected, I saw them receive their orders aside, they listend with care, the adjutant was very grave, I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.

chapter-188	The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the irregular snap! snap! I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again, the right time, Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel leads himself this time with brandishd sword,) I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries, (The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,) (these in my vision I hear or see,)

chapter-189	Ethiopia Saluting the Colors Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human, With your woolly-white and turband head, and bare bony feet? Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? (Tis while our army lines Carolinas sands and pines, Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia comst to me, As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.) Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunderd, A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught, Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought. No further does she say, but lingering all the day, Her high-borne turband head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye, And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by. What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human? Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green? Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?

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chapter-193	O tan-faced prairie-boy, O tan-faced prairie-boy, Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but lookd on each other, more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

chapter-194	Look Down Fair Moon Look down fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down nights nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, On the dead on their backs with arms tossd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

chapter-195	Reconciliation Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this solid world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

chapter-196	How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865] How solemn as one by one, As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where stand, As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the masks, (As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend, How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks, I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul, O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend, Nor the bayonet stab what you really are; The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best, Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill, Nor the bayonet stab O friend.

chapter-197	As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume, I know I am restless and make others so, I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death, For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me, I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, And the threat of what is calld hell is little or nothing to me, And the lure of what is calld heaven is little or nothing to me; Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,

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chapter-199	To a Certain Civilian Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me? Did you seek the civilians peaceful and languishing rhymes? Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow? Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand--nor (I have been born of the same as the war was born, The drum-corps rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the martial dirge, With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officers funeral;) What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works, And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes, For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.

chapter-200	Lo, Victress on the peaks, Lo, Victress on the peaks, Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world, (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,) Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all, Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, Flauntest now unharmd in immortal soundness and bloom--lo, in these hours supreme, No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor masterys rapturous verse, But a cluster containing nights darkness and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead.

chapter-201	Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865] Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours! Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene--electric spirit, Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum, Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders, As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day, Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close, Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone, Let them identify you to the future in these songs.

chapter-202	Adieu O soldier, Adieu O soldier, You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) The rapid march, the life of the camp, The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manuvre, Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game, Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and like of you all filld, With war and wars expression. Adieu dear comrade, Your mission is fulfilld--but I, more warlike, Myself and this contentious soul of mine, Still on our own campaigning bound, Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here, To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

chapter-203	Turn O Libertad Turn O Libertad, for the war is over, From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world, Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past, From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past, From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste, Turn to the world, the triumphs reservd and to come--give up that backward world, Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past, But what remains remains for singers for you--wars to come are for you, (Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars of the present also inure;) Then turn, and be not alarmd O Libertad--turn your undying face, To where the future, greater than all the past, Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

chapter-204	To the Leavend Soil They Trod To the leavend soil they trod calling I sing for the last, (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,) In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas again to peace restored, To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the South and the North, To the leavend soil of the general Western world to attest my songs, To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide, To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air; The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely, The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.

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chapter-206	And the great star early droopd in the western sky in the night, Deaths outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, Night and day journeys a coffin. Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, The gray-brown bird I know receivd us comrades three, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under many a star, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,

chapter-207	our fearful trip is done, The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, Where on the deck my Captain lies, rise up and hear the bells; For you bouquets and ribbond wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding, Here Captain! Here Captain! Here Captain! Here Captain! Here Captain! Here Captain! Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, Youve fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchord safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. Fallen cold and dead.

chapter-208	Hushd be the camps to-day, Hushd be the camps to-day, And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons, And each with musing soul retire to celebrate, Our dear commanders death. No more for him lifes stormy conflicts, Nor victory, nor defeat--no more times dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. But sing poet in our name, Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly. As they invault the coffin there, Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

chapter-209	This dust was once the man, This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States.

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chapter-211	Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America, Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men. Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, Of these States the poet is the equable man, infidel, who has ever askd any thing of America? If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great, Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity. Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women, love for men and women, After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men and Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, And I saw the free souls of poets, Bards for my own land only I invoke, bards of the war!

chapter-212	Reversals Let that which stood in front go behind, Let that which was behind advance to the front, Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, Let the old propositions be postponed, Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself, Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself

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chapter-214	As Consequent, Etc. As consequent from store of summer rains, Songs of continued years I sing. Lifes ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing, Currents for starting a continent new, Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid, Fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves, (Not safe and peaceful only, waves rousd and ominous too, Out of the depths the storms abysmic waves, who knows whence? Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatterd sail.) Or from the sea of Time, collecting vasting all, I bring, O little shells, so curious-convolute, so limpid-cold and voiceless, Will you not little shells to the tympans of temples held, Wafted inland, sent from Atlanticas rim, strains for the soul of Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable, (For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give,)

chapter-215	Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields, Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, O harvest of my lands--O boundless summer growths, The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. Thou groanst with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-garment, A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne, As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so have Askd room those flushd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies? I saw the day the return of the heroes, A pause--the armies wait, Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All, Well-pleased America thou beholdest, With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest. Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great

chapter-216	There Was a Child Went Forth Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the And the friendly boys that passd, and the quarrelsome boys, They gave this child more of themselves than that, They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him. The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table, The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

chapter-217	Old Ireland Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother, Her old white hair drooping disheveld round her shoulders, At her feet fallen an unused royal harp, Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love. Yet a word ancient mother, You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead O you need not sit there veild in your old white hair so disheveld, For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave, It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead, The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country, Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave, What you wept for was translated, passd from the grave, And now with rosy and new blood, Moves to-day in a new country.

chapter-218	The City Dead-House By the city dead-house by the gate, As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor, I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought, Her corpse they deposit unclaimd, it lies on the damp brick pavement, The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it alone, That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice not, But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever built! That little house alone more than them all--poor, desperate house! Fair, fearful wreck--tenement of a soul--itself a soul, Unclaimd, avoided house--take one breath from my tremulous lips, Dead house of love--house of madness and sin, crumbled, crushd, House of life, erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house, dead even then, Months, years, an echoing, garnishd house--but dead, dead, dead.

chapter-219	I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. Behold this compost! behold it well! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potatos dark green leaves, of sour dead. That the winds are really not infectious, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,

chapter-220	To a Foild European Revolutionaire That is nothing that is quelld by one or two failures, or any number of failures, What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, (Not songs of loyalty alone are these, But songs of insurrection also, The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres, But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enterd into full possession. When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last. When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged And the infidel come into full possession. Then courage European revolter, revoltress! In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment--for they too are great. defeat is great,

chapter-221	Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten Garnerd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others, What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology, O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? I believe of all those men and women that filld the unnamed lands, them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me; Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.

chapter-222	On Time, Space, Reality--on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence. Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing. All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls, Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, Knows that the young man who composedly perild his life and lost it That he who never perild his life, but retains it to old age in Knows that only that person has really learnd who has learnd to Who favors body and soul the same,

chapter-223	The Singer in the Prison Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceasd their pacing, The sun was low in the west one winter day, (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters, Nor hand of friend, nor loving face, Nor favor comes, nor word of grace. The heavenly pardoner death shall come. Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole! One glance swept from her clear calm eyes oer all those upturnd faces, Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal, While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirrd, (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,) A wondrous minute then--but after in the solitary night, to many, the voice, the words, Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle, The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings, O fearful thought--a convict soul. O fearful thought--a convict soul.

chapter-224	Warble for Lilac-Time Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,) Sort me O tongue and lips for Natures sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making, The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts, the summer is here! O if one could but fly like a bird! O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! To glide with thee O soul, oer all, in all, as a ship oer the waters; Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves, Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence, Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere, To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds, A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

chapter-225	Outlines for a Tomb [G. What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? The life thou livedst we know not, But that thou walkdst thy years in barter, mid the haunts of Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes, In one, among the city streets a laborers home appeard, After his days work done, cleanly, sweet-aird, the gaslight burning, In one, the sacred parturition scene, A happy painless mother birthd a perfect child. Sat peaceful parents with contented sons. Hundreds concentring, walkd the paths and streets and roads, Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughters daughter, sat, Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old, All, all the shows of laboring life, Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, (The intentions perfect and divine, The workings, details, haply human.) O thou within this tomb, From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver, By you and all your teeming life old Thames,

chapter-226	Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait] Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask, These lights and shades, this drama of the whole, This common curtain of the face containd in me for me, in you for (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears--0 heaven! The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!) This glaze of Gods serenest purest sky, This film of Satans seething pit, This hearts geographys map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; Out from the convolutions of this globe, This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe, Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;) These burind eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time, To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate, To you whoeer you are--a look. A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,

chapter-227	Vocalism Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Come duly to the divine power to speak words? After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, woman, the divine power to speak words; Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all--none close ranks, mouth of that man or that woman. O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, All waits for the right voices; For I see every word utterd thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering forever ready in all words.

chapter-228	To Him That Was Crucified My spirit to yours dear brother, Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, I do not sound your name, but I understand you, I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also, We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted, They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade, Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras, Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.

chapter-229	You felons on trial in courts, You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chaind and handcuffd with iron, Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison? Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chaind with iron, or my ankles with iron? You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself? O culpable! I acknowledge--I expose! (O admirers, praise not me--compliment not me--you make me wince, I see what you do not--I know what you do not.) Inside these breast-bones I lie smutchd and choked, Beneath this face that appears so impassive hells tides continually run, Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, I walk with delinquents with passionate love, I feel I am of them--I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,

chapter-230	Laws for creations, Laws for creations, For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and perfect literats for America, For noble savans and coming musicians. All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world, There shall be no subject too pronounced--all works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections. What do you suppose creation is? What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior? What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean? And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?

chapter-231	To a Common Prostitute Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.

chapter-232	I Was Looking a Long While I was looking a long while for Intentions, For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it, It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject,) It is no more in the legends than in all else, It is in the present--it is this earth to-day, It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,) It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of to-day, It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts, It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, All for the modern--all for the average man of to-day.

chapter-233	Thought Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls, So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked, And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots, And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)

chapter-234	Miracles Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, To me the sea is a continual miracle, What stranger miracles are there?

chapter-235	Where the citys ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day, Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them. By the curb toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife, Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee, With measurd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but firm hand, Forth issue then in copious golden jets, The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me, The sad sharp-chinnd old man with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band of leather, The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets, The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-pressd blade, Sparkles from the wheel. Sparkles from the wheel. Sparkles from the wheel.

chapter-236	To a Pupil Is reform needed? The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need to accomplish it. do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impressd with your Personality? O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality.

chapter-237	Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man, Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love, Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man, Unfolded out of the folds of the womans brain come all the folds Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.

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chapter-239	Kosmos Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also, Who has not lookd forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual, Who having considerd the body finds all its organs and parts good, Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States; Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons,

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chapter-241	I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mothers womb is equally wonderful, each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, be true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, equally wonderful, wonderful. wonderful.

chapter-242	Tests All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception.

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chapter-244	O star of France, O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, Dim smitten star, Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, Star panting oer a land of death, heroic land, yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee, In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly, In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy druggd sleep, In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones The spear thrust in thy side. O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long! Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, So thee O ship of France! Finishd the days, the clouds dispeld Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star,

chapter-245	The Ox-Tamer In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock The bullocks head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, how soon his rage subsides--how soon this tamer tames him; on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; How straight and square they stand on their legs--what fine sagacious eyes! How straight they watch their tamer--they wish him near them--how they turn to look after him! Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms, In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.

chapter-246	[For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874] An old mans thought of school, An old mans thought of school, An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot. Now only do I know you, O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass! And these I see, these sparkling eyes, These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives, Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships, Soon to sail out over the measureless seas, On the souls voyage. Only a lot of boys and girls? Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? Only a public school? Ah more, infinitely more; (As George Fox raisd his warning cry, Is it this pile of brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church? Why this is not the church at all--the church is living, ever living souls.) To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.

chapter-247	Wandering at morn, Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine! Thee coild in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee, This common marvel I beheld--the parent thrush I watchd feeding its young, The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic, Fail not to certify and cheer my soul. There ponderd, felt I, If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turnd, If vermin so transposed, so used and blessd may be, Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destind to fill the world.

chapter-248	Italian Music in Dakota [The Seventeenth--the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.] Through the soft evening air enwinding all, Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, In dulcet streams, in flutes and cornets notes, Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, Not to the citys frescod rooms, not to the audience of the opera house, Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, Sonnambulas innocent love, trios with Normas anguish, And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;) Rayd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, Music, Italian music in Dakota. While Nature, sovereign of this gnarld realm, Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, Acknowledging rapport however far removd, (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) Listens well pleasd.

chapter-249	With All Thy Gifts With all thy gifts America, Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world, Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--with these and like of these vouchsafed to thee, What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,) The gift of perfect women fit for thee--what if that gift of gifts thou lackest? The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee? The mothers fit for thee?

chapter-250	My Picture-Gallery In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fixd house, It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories! Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death; Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself, With finger raisd he points to the prodigal pictures.

chapter-251	The Prairie States A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed--freedoms and laws and thrifts society, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of times accumulations, To justify the past.

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chapter-253	Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire, For thee they sing and dance O soul. To flutes clear notes and sounding harps cantabile. I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals, I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love, Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music, All songs of current lands come sounding round me, I hear in the William Tell the music of an arousd and angry people, I hear the dance-music of all nations, I see religious dances old and new, I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre, To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of voices, The tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and dances, Haply what thou hast heard O soul was not the sound of winds, Nor strophes of husbands and wives, nor sound of marching soldiers,

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chapter-255	Lo, soul, seest thou not Gods purpose from the first? But in Gods name, and for thy sake O soul. The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.) A ceaseless thought, a varied train--lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, For purpose vast, mans long probation filld, The true son of God shall come singing his songs. O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me, Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) O soul thou pleasest me, I thee, O soul thou pleasest me, I thee, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing, But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth; Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achievd, O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,

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chapter-257	Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee, Thou knowest my years entire, my life, Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth, Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee, Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee, My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee, Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee; The end I know not, it is all in Thee, Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what lands, Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know, That Thou O God my life hast lighted, Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee. I yield my ships to Thee. I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me, Thee, Thee at least I know. What do I know of life?

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chapter-259	And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt. The female that loves unrequited sleeps, And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps, My truant lover has come, and it is dark. His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead, The night and sleep have likend them and restored them. Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed, measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you. I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long, I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.

chapter-260	Transpositions Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling--let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands; Let judges and criminals be transposed--let the prison-keepers be put in prison--let those that were prisoners take the keys; Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.

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chapter-262	To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward. The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it, To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials, To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking To think how eager we are in building our houses, To think that other working-men will make just as great account of goodness, to think how wide a difference, To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie The earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, The law of the living cannot be eluded, it is eternal, The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded, I have dreamd that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!

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chapter-264	Darest thou now O soul, Darest thou now O soul, Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow? No map there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. I know it not O soul, Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, All waits undreamd of in that region, that inaccessible land. Till when the ties loosen, All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us. Then we burst forth, we float, In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them, Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

chapter-265	Whispers of Heavenly Death Whispers of heavenly death murmurd I hear, Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low, Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing, (Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing, With at times a half-dimmd saddend far-off star, Appearing and disappearing. (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, Some soul is passing over.)

chapter-266	Chanting the Square Deific Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides, Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine, Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any, As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws, Relentless I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that mans life; But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and But my charity has no death--my wisdom dies not, neither early nor late, Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words. Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive, Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, the

chapter-267	Of Him I Love Day and Night Of him I love day and night I dreamd I heard he was dead, And I dreamd I went where they had buried him I love, but he was And I dreamd I wanderd searching among burial-places to find him, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living; And what I dreamd I will henceforth tell to every person and age, And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamd, And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them, And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied, renderd to powder and pourd in the sea, I shall be satisfied, Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.

chapter-268	Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also, Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles, Earth to a chamber of mourning turns--I hear the oerweening, mocking voice, Matter is conqueror--matter, triumphant only, continues onward. Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmd, uncertain, The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me, Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination. I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you, I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry, Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,-Old age, alarmd, uncertain--a young womans voice, appealing to me for comfort; A young mans voice, Shall I not escape?

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chapter-270	Assurances I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul; I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for, (Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?) I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

chapter-271	Quicksand Years Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither, Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possessd soul, eludes not, Ones-self must never give way--that is the final substance--that out of all is sure, Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? When shows break up what but Ones-Self is sure?

chapter-272	That Music Always Round Me That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear, But now the chorus I hear and am elated, A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear, A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves, A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe, The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all these I fill myself with, I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings, I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion; I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think begin to know them.

chapter-273	What Ship Puzzled at Sea What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning? Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect pilot needs? Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot, Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.

chapter-274	A noiseless patient spider, A noiseless patient spider, I markd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Markd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launchd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be formd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

chapter-275	O living always, always dying! O living always, always dying! O the burials of me past and present, O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever; O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;) O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them, To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.

chapter-276	To One Shortly to Die From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you, You are to die--let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you--there is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you ust feel it, I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it, I sit quietly by, I remain faithful, I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor, I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is eternal, you yourself will surely escape, The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions, Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile, I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated, I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.

chapter-277	Night on the prairies, Night on the prairies, I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I admire death and test propositions. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. And now touchd with the lives of other globes arrived as far along as those of the earth, Or waiting to arrive, or passd on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life, Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive. O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

chapter-278	Thought As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing, To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a wreck at sea, Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and wafted kisses, and that is the last of them, Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President, Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founderd off the Northeast coast and going down--of the steamship Arctic going down, Of the veild tableau-women gatherd together on deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close--O the moment! A huge sob--a few bubbles--the white foam spirting up--and then the women gone, Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on--and I now pondering, Are those women indeed gone? Are souls drownd and destroyd so? Is only matter triumphant?

chapter-279	The Last Invocation At the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful fortressd house, From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors, Let me be wafted. Let me glide noiselessly forth; With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper, Set ope the doors O soul. Tenderly--be not impatient, (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, Strong is your hold O love.)

chapter-280	As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing As I watchd the ploughman ploughing, Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting, I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies; (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

chapter-281	Pensive and faltering, Pensive and faltering, The words the Dead I write, For living are the Dead, (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

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chapter-283	Thou Mother with thy equal brood, Thou Mother with thy equal brood, And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain, Thou wonder world yet undefined, unformd, neither do I define thee, Thee in thy future, Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosend mind, Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain, Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest (Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor Thee in thy ultimate, (the preparations only now completed, the Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy. In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, In thee America, the soul, its destinies, The Present holds thee not--for such vast growth as thine,

chapter-284	A Paumanok Picture Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers --they drop the joind seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-deep in the water, poisd on strong legs, The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them, Strewd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water, the green-backd spotted mossbonkers.

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chapter-286	Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! my special word to thee. Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee, Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation. (Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive, I know before the fitting man all Nature yields, Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice--and thou O sun, As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.) Thou that with fructifying heat and light, Oer myriad farms, oer lands and waters North and South, Oer Mississippis endless course, oer Texas grassy plains, Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas, thy million millions, Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,

chapter-287	Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces! The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces This now is too lamentable a face for a man, I saw the face of the most smeard and slobbering idiot they had at This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest, This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good. This is a full-grown lilys face, Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you, The old face of the mother of many children, It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them. She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more

chapter-288	I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes, Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee, Thy song expands my numbd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me, What charm thy music works! and for thy theme, The heart of man and woman all for love, Love, that is all the earth to lovers--love, that mocks time and space, Blow again trumpeter--conjure wars alarums. Nor war alone--thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me, Now trumpeter for thy close, A vigor more than earths is in thy notes, Hymns to the universal God from universal man--all joy! A reborn race appears--a perfect world, all joy! Riotous laughing bacchanals filld with joy! War, sorrow, suffering gone--the rank earth purged--nothing but joy left! all over joy! all over joy! all over joy! all over joy! all over joy!

chapter-289	Thee for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, thy measurd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy great protruding head-light fixd in front, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, thy wheels, For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee, With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow, By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing. Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills returnd,

chapter-290	O magnet-south! O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South! O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where I was born--the grains, plants, rivers, Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of slivery sands or through swamps, O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night, A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leavd corn, never wander more.

chapter-291	I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city, Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, I see that the word of my city is that word from of old, Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, island sixteen miles long, solid-founded, Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas, The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-modeld, The down-town streets, the jobbers houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets, brown-faced sailors, The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-formd, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes, City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! City nested in bays! my city!

chapter-292	All Is Truth O me, man of slack faith so long, Standing aloof, denying portions so long, Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth, but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself, (This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be realized, Where has faild a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth? or in the spirit of man? that there are really no liars or lies after all, And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called lies are perfect returns, And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it, And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but that all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,

chapter-293	A Riddle Song That which eludes this verse and any verse, Unheard by sharpest ear, unformd in clearest eye or cunningest mind, Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly, Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss, Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion, Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner, Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose, Which sculptor never chiseld yet, nor painter painted, Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utterd, Invoking here and now I challenge for my song. Indifferently, mid public, private haunts, in solitude, Two little breaths of words comprising it, Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it. land, have drawn mens eyes, Haply Gods riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,

chapter-294	Excelsior Who has gone farthest? for I would go farther, for I would be the most just person of the earth, for I would be more cautious, for I would be more cautious, And who has been happiest? O I think it is I--I think no one was ever happier than I, And who has lavishd all? for I lavish constantly the best I have, And who proudest? for I think I have reason to be the proudest son alive--for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city, And who benevolent? for I would show more benevolence than all the rest, And who has receivd the love of the most friends? it is to receive the passionate love of many friends, And who thinks the amplest thoughts? for I would surround those thoughts, And who has made hymns fit for the earth? devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth.

chapter-295	Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats, Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats, Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me, (For what is my life or any mans life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?) You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites, You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!) You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses, You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;) You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smotherd ennuis! Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth, It shall yet march forth oermastering, till all lies beneath me, It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.

chapter-296	Thoughts Of public opinion, Of a calm and cool fiat sooner or later, (how impassive! how certain and final!) Of the President with pale face asking secretly to himself, What will the people say at last? Of the frivolous Judge--of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor--of such as these standing helpless and exposed, Of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,) Of the lessening year by year of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes, pulpits, schools, Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality; Of the true New World--of the Democracies resplendent en-masse, Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them, Of the shining sun by them--of the inherent light, greater than the rest, Of the envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them.

chapter-297	Mediums They shall arise in the States, They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness, They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos, They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive, They shall be complete women and men, their pose brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood clean and clear, They shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of Chicago the great city. They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and oratresses, Strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of poems shall come from their lives, they shall be makers and finders, Of them and of their works shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels, Characters, events, retrospections, shall be conveyd in gospels, trees, animals, waters, shall be conveyd, Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be conveyd.

chapter-298	Weave in, My Hardy Life Weave in, weave in, my hardy life, Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come, Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight weave in, Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the wet, the warp, incessant weave, tire not, (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor really aught we know, But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the death-envelopd march of peace as well as war goes on,) For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave, We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.

chapter-299	Spain, 1873-74 Out of the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks and heapd-up skeletons of kings, Out of that old entire European debris, the shatterd mummeries, Ruind cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, Lo, Freedoms features fresh undimmd look forth--the same immortal face looks forth; (A glimpse as of thy Mothers face Columbia, A flash significant as of a sword, Beaming towards thee.) Nor think we forget thee maternal; Lagdst thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee? Ah, but thou hast thyself now appeard to us--we know thee, Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself, Thou waitest there as everywhere thy time.

chapter-300	By Broad Potomacs Shore By broad Potomacs shore, again old tongue, (Still uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?) Again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning, Again the freshness and the odors, again Virginias summer sky, pellucid blue and silver, Again the forenoon purple of the hills, Again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green, Again the blood-red roses blooming. Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses! Lave subtly with your waters every line Potomac! Give me of you O spring, before I close, to put between its pages! O forenoon purple of the hills, before I close, of you! O deathless grass, of you!

chapter-301	From Far Dakotas Canyons [June 25, 1876] From far Dakotas canyons, Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence, Haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a trumpet-note for heroes. The battle-bulletin, The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment, The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism, The loftiest of life upheld by death, O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee! As sitting in dark days, (The sun there at the centre though conceald, Electric life forever at the centre,) Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle, bright sword in thy hand, Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds, (I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,) After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color, Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers, Thou yieldest up thyself.

chapter-302	Old War-Dreams In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,) Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide, Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains, Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps, Long have they passd, faces and trenches and fields, Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, Onward I sped at the time--but now of their forms at night, I dream, I dream, I dream. I dream, I dream, I dream. I dream, I dream, I dream.

chapter-303	Long yet your road, fateful flag--long yet your road, and lined with bloody death, For the prize I see at issue at last is the world, All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner; Dreamd again the flags of kings, highest borne to flaunt unrivald? O hasten flag of man--O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings, Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol--run up above them all, Flag of stars! Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting! thick-sprinkled bunting! thick-sprinkled bunting!

chapter-304	returnd from his Worlds Tour] What best I see in thee, What best I see in thee, Is not that where thou movst down historys great highways, Ever undimmd by time shoots warlike victorys dazzle, Or that thou satst where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarmd upon, Who walkd with kings with even pace the round worlds promenade; But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohios, Indianas millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front, Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round worlds promenade, Were all so justified.

chapter-305	[Written in Platte Canyon, Colorado] Spirit that formd this scene, Spirit that formd this scene, These tumbled rock-piles grim and red, These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks, These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness, These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own, I know thee, savage spirit--we have communed together, Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own; Wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art? To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse? The lyrists measurd beat, the wrought-out temples grace--column and polishd arch forgot? But thou that revelest here--spirit that formd this scene, They have rememberd thee.

chapter-306	As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days As I walk these broad majestic days of peace, (For the war, the struggle of blood finishd, wherein, O terrific Ideal, Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce, The announcements of recognized things, science, The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions. The vast factories with their foremen and workmen, And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it. But I too announce solid things, Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, They stand for realities--all is as it should be. Then my realities; The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements

chapter-307	A Clear Midnight This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.

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chapter-309	As the Time Draws Nigh As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud, A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me. I shall go forth, I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long, Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will suddenly cease. O book, O chants! Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? enough, O soul; O soul, we have positively appeard--that is enough.

chapter-310	Years of the modern! Years of the modern! years of the unperformd! I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the worlds stage, (Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;) Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest! His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the wholesale engines of war, geography, all lands; What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing under Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim, The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights; Years prophetical! O years! Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! The performd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,

chapter-311	Ashes of Soldiers Ashes of soldiers South or North, From every point of the compass out of the countless graves, what life, what joy and pride, Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums. Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless, I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers. But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes. Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over--and what love, O comrades! Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love, Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers, Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride. O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry. That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew, For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.

chapter-312	How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure evil as well as good, How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results, (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the and things begun, How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of And how the States are complete in themselves--and how all triumphs convulsd, and serve other parturitions and transitions, And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses too, serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors, Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to Of the present, passing, departing--of the growth of completer men Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the

chapter-313	You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing. Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, Natural life of me faithfully praising things, Corroborating forever the triumph of things. Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body, Illustrious the passing light--illustrious the pale reflection on Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last. Wonderful to depart! Wonderful to be here! To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love. How the clouds pass silently overhead! How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! (Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.) O spirituality of things! I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass of the Western Sea, I sing to the last the equalities modern or old, I sing the endless finales of things, O setting sun!

chapter-314	As at thy portals also death, As at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, I sit by the form in the coffin, I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;) To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best, I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs, And set a tombstone here.

chapter-315	My Legacy The business man the acquirer vast, After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure, Devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths stocks, goods, funds for a school or hospital, Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems and gold. But I, my life surveying, closing, With nothing to show to devise from its idle years, Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends, Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you, And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love, I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.

chapter-316	Pensive on Her Dead Gazing Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All, Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my sons, lose not an atom, And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood, And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable, And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers depths, blood trickling reddend, My dead absorb or South or North--my young mens bodies absorb, and their precious precious blood, year hence, In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence, In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet! Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.

chapter-317	Camps of Green Nor alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars, When as orderd forward, after a long march, Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens we halt for the night, And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety, Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums, Lo, the camps of the tents of green, With a mystic army, (is it too orderd forward? Till night and sleep pass over?) Now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world, Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of all, Of the corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and generals all, For presently O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of green, But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign, Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.

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chapter-320	(Pleasd to my soul at death I cry,) Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps! She swiftly courses from the shore, Joy, shipmate, joy. Joy, shipmate, joy. Joy, shipmate, joy.

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chapter-322	Portals What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the Unknown? And what are those of life but for Death?

chapter-323	These Carols These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see, For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.

chapter-324	Now finale to the shore, Now finale to the shore, Now land and life finale and farewell, Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,) Often enough hast thou adventurd oer the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port and hawsers tie returning; But now obey thy cherishd secret wish, Embrace thy friends, leave all in order, To port and hawsers tie no more returning, Depart upon thy endless cruise old Sailor.

chapter-325	To conclude, I announce what comes after me. I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all, the songs of life and death, I announce natural persons to arise, I announce justice triumphant, I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only, I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosend, I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!) I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. I announce a race of splendid and savage old men. To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving, So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary, I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,

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chapter-327	Mannahatta My citys fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves.

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chapter-331	A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition, My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same, Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry; Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love, Your aggregate retaind entire--Of north, south, east and west, your items all; Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast, The body wreckd, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia falling pall-like round me, The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct, The undiminishd faith--the groups of loving friends.

chapter-332	The Bravest Soldiers Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; But the bravest pressd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

chapter-333	A Font of Type This latent mine--these unlaunchd voices--passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or soothd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

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chapter-335	My Canary Bird Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books, Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations? But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble, Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon, Is it not just as great, O soul?

chapter-336	Queries to My Seventieth Year Approaching, nearing, curious, Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death? Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier? Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet? Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crackd voice harping, screeching?

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chapter-339	America Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endeard, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chaird in the adamant of Time.

chapter-340	Memories How sweet the silent backward tracings! The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed --their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

chapter-341	To-Day and Thee The appointed winners in a long-stretchd game; The course of Time and nations--Egypt, India, Greece and Rome; The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments, Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books, Garnerd for now and thee--To think of it! The heirdom all converged in thee!

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chapter-343	Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809 To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer--a pulse of thought, To memory of Him--to birth of Him.

chapter-344	Out of Mays Shows Selected Apple orchards, the trees all coverd with blossoms; Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green; The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning; The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun; The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

chapter-345	Halcyon Days Not from successful love alone, Nor wealth, nor honord middle age, nor victories of politics or war; But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air, As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finishd and indolent-ripe on the tree, Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

chapter-346	A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why, Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand. Had I the choice to tally greatest bards, [III] You Tides with Ceaseless Swell You tides with ceaseless swell! With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies, Poets unnamed--artists greatest of any, with cherishd lost designs, Loves unresponse--a chorus of ages complaints--hopes last words, [VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, [VII] By That Long Scan of Waves By that long scan of waves, myself calld back, resumed upon myself, The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand, Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:

chapter-347	Election Day, November, 1884 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregons white cones--nor Hurons belt of mighty lakes--nor Mississippis stream: --This seething hemispheres humanity, as now, Id name--the still small voice vibrating--Americas choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) The stretch of North and South arousd--sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Romes wars of old, or modern Napoleons:) the Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross: it serves to purify--while the heart

chapter-348	With husky-haughty lips, O sea! With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dashd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloosd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest--no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state--something thou ever seekst and seekst, yet never gainst, Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) Outsurging, muttering from thy souls abysms, Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

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chapter-351	Washingtons Monument February, 1885 Ah, not this marble, dead and cold: Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling, comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the worlds, the continents entire--not yours alone, America, Europes as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborers cot, Or frozen North, or sultry South--the Africans--the Arabs in his tent, Old Asias there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new? tis but the same--the heir legitimate, continued ever, The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line, Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--een in defeat defeated not, the same:) Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night, Through teeming cities streets, indoors or out, factories or farms, Now, or to come, or past--where patriot wills existed or exist, Wherever Freedom, poisd by Toleration, swayd by Law, Stands or is rising thy true monument.

chapter-352	Of That Blithe Throat of Thine Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank, Ill mind the lesson, solitary bird--let me too welcome chilling drifts, Een the profoundest chill, as now--a torpid pulse, a brain unnervd, Old age land-lockd within its winter bay--(cold, cold, O cold!) These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last; Not summers zones alone--not chants of youth, or souths warm tides alone, But held by sluggish floes, packd in the northern ice, the cumulus of years, These with gay heart I also sing.

chapter-353	Broadway What hurrying human tides, or day or night! What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! What curious questioning glances--glints of love! Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet! Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming, mocking life! Thou visord, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

chapter-354	To get the final lilt of songs, To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt-to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

chapter-355	Old Salt Kossabone Far back, related on my mothers side, Old Salt Kossabone, Ill tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor all his life--was nearly 90--lived with his married grandchild, Jenny; House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea;) The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, In his great arm chair by the window seated, (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,) Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself-And now the close of all: One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long--cross-tides and much wrong going, At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering, And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering, cleaving, as he watches, Jenny came, he sat there dead, Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mothers side, far back.

chapter-356	The Dead Tenor As down the stage again, With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable, Back from the fading lessons of the past, Id call, Id tell and own, How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee! (So firm--so liquid-soft--again that tremulous, manly timbre! The perfect singing voice--deepest of all to me the lesson--trial and test of all:) How through those strains distilld--how the rapt ears, the soul of me, absorbing Fernandos heart, Manricos passionate call, Ernanis, sweet Gennaros, I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting, Freedoms and Loves and Faiths unloosd cantabile, (As perfumes, colors, sunlights correlation:) From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor, A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shoveld earth, To memory of thee.

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chapter-358	A song, a poem of itself--the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up; Yonnondio--I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight, (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls! No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:) Yonnondio! Yonnondio! Yonnondio!--unlimnd they disappear; To-day gives place, and fades--the cities, farms, factories fade; A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment, Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

chapter-359	Life Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (Have former armies faild? then we send fresh armies--and fresh again;) Ever the grappled mystery of all earths ages old or new; Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause; Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last; Struggling to-day the same--battling the same.

chapter-360	Going Somewhere My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (Now buried in an English grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,) Ended our talk--The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep, Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics all, Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering, Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,) The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes, All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere.

chapter-361	Small the Theme of My Chant Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest--namely, Ones-Self-a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Mans physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;--I say the Form complete is worthier far. The Female equally with the Male, I sing. Nor cease at the theme of Ones-Self. I speak the word of the modern, the word En-Masse. My Days I sing, and the Lands--with interstice I knew of hapless War. (O friend, whoeer you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than once, and linkd together let us go.)

chapter-362	True Conquerors Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,) Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck, Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars; Enough that theyve survived at all--long lifes unflinching ones! Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all-True conquerors oer all the rest.

chapter-363	The United States to Old World Critics Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

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chapter-365	Thanks in Old Age Thanks in old age--thanks ere I go, For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air--for life, mere life, For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear--you, father--you, brothers, sisters, friends,) For all my days--not those of peace alone--the days of war the same, For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands, (You distant, dim unknown--or young or old--countless, unspecified, We never met, and neer shall meet--and yet our souls embrace, long, close and long;) For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books--for colors, forms, For all the brave strong men--devoted, hardy men--whove forward sprung in freedoms help, all years, all lands For braver, stronger, more devoted men--(a special laurel ere I go, to lifes wars chosen ones, foremost leaders, captains of the soul:) As soldier from an ended war returnd--As traveler out of myriads, to the long procession retrospective, Thanks--joyful thanks!--a soldiers, travelers thanks.

chapter-366	Life and Death The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. By each successive age insoluble, passd on, To ours to-day--and we pass on the same.

chapter-367	The Voice of the Rain And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely formd, altogether changed, and I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it; (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering, Reckd or unreckd, duly with love returns.)

chapter-368	Soon shall the winters foil be here; Soon shall the winters foil be here; Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt--A little while, And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth--a thousand forms shall rise From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves. Thine eyes, ears--all thy best attributes--all that takes cognizance of natural beauty, Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth, Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers, The arbutus under foot, the willows yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry; With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the flitting bluebird; For such the scenes the annual play brings on.

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chapter-370	The Dying Veteran Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity, Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum, I cast a reminiscence--(likely twill offend you, I heard it in my boyhood;)--More than a generation since, A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself, (Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic, Had fought in the ranks--fought well--had been all through the Revolutionary war,) Lay dying--sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him, Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words: Let me return again to my war-days, To the sights and scenes--to forming the line of battle, To the scouts ahead reconnoitering, To the cannons, the grim artillery, To the galloping aides, carrying orders, To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense, The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise; Away with your life of peace!--your joys of peace! Give me my old wild battle-life again!

chapter-371	Stronger Lessons Have you learnd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learnd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

chapter-372	A Prairie Sunset Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, The earths whole amplitude and Natures multiform power consignd for once to colors; The light, the general air possessd by them--colors till now unknown, No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian-North, South, all, Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

chapter-373	Twenty Years Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting: He shippd as green-hand boy, and saild away, (took some sudden, vehement notion;) Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round, While he the globe was circling round and round, --and now returns: How changed the place--all the old land-marks gone--the parents dead; (Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good--to settle--has a well-filld purse--no spot will do but this;) The little boat that sculld him from the sloop, now held in leash I see, I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand, I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass, I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded--the stout-strong frame, Dressd in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth: (Then what the told-out story of those twenty years?

chapter-374	Orange Buds by Mail from Florida A lesser proof than old Voltaires, yet greater, Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America, To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow, Brought safely for a thousand miles oer land and tide, Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting, Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding, A bunch of orange buds by mall from Florida.

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chapter-376	You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs, And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row; You tokens diminute and lorn--(not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom--no grain of August now;) You pallid banner-staves--you pennants valueless--you overstayd of time, Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, The faithfulest--hardiest--last.

chapter-377	Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like eagles talons,) But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some summer--bursting forth, To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade--to nourishing fruit, Apples and grapes--the stalwart limbs of trees emerging--the fresh, free, open air, And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.

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chapter-381	Now Precedent Songs, Farewell Now precedent songs, farewell--by every name farewell, (Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons, From ups and downs--with intervals--from elder years, mid-age, or youth,) In Cabind Ships, or Thee Old Cause or Poets to Come Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam, Beat! Beat! Drums! or To the Leavend Soil they Trod, My Captain! My Captain! Kosmos, Quicksand Years, or Thoughts, Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood, and many, many more unspecified, From fibre heart of mine--from throat and tongue--(My lifes hot pulsing blood, The personal urge and form for me--not merely paper, automatic type and ink,) Each song of mine--each utterance in the past--having its long, long history, Of life or death, or soldiers wound, of countrys loss or safety, (O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared What wretched shred een at the best of all!)

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chapter-384	After the Supper and Talk After the supper and talk--after the day is done, As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging, Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating, (So hard for his hand to release those hands--no more will they meet, No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young, A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,) Shunning, postponing severance--seeking to ward off the last word ever so little, Een at the exit-door turning--charges superfluous calling back-een as he descends the steps, Something to eke out a minute additional--shadows of nightfall deepening, Farewells, messages lessening--dimmer the forthgoers visage and form, Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness--loth, O so loth to depart! Garrulous to the very last.

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chapter-387	Lingering Last Drops And whence and why come you? We know not whence, (was the answer,) We only know that we drift here with the rest, That we lingerd and laggd--but were wafted at last, and are now here, To make the passing showers concluding drops.

chapter-388	Good-Bye My Fancy Good-bye my fancy--(I had a word to say, But tis not quite the time--The best of any mans word or say, Is when its proper place arrives--and for its meaning, I keep mine till the last.)

chapter-389	My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years, Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in one--combining all, My single soul--aims, confirmations, failures, joys--Nor single soul alone, I chant my nations crucial stage, (Americas, haply humanitys)-the trial great, the victory great, A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world, the ancient, medieval, Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats--here at the west a voice triumphant--justifying all, A gladsome pealing cry--a song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction; I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the best sooner than the worst)--And now I chant old age, (My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summers, As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and love, wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions, On, on ye jocund twain! On, on ye jocund twain!

chapter-390	MY 71st Year After surmounting three-score and ten, With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, My parents deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of 63 and 4, As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle, To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here, with vital voice, Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.

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chapter-392	The Pallid Wreath Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is, Let it remain back there on its nail suspended, With pink, blue, yellow, all blanchd, and the white now gray and ashy, One witherd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend; But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded? Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead? No, while memories subtly play--the past vivid as ever; For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee, Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach, It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

chapter-393	An Ended Day The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion, The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done; Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

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chapter-395	To the Pending Year Have I no weapon-word for thee--some message brief and fierce? (Have I fought out and done indeed the battle?) Is there no shot left, For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness? Nor for myself--my own rebellious self in thee? Down, down, proud gorge!--though choking thee; Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter; Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts.

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chapter-399	Interpolation Sounds Over and through the burial chant, Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests, To me come interpolation sounds not in the show--plainly to me, crowding up the aisle and from the window, Of sudden battles hurry and harsh noises--wars grim game to sight and ear in earnest; The scout calld up and forward--the general mounted and his aides around him--the new-brought word--the instantaneous order issued; The rifle crack--the cannon thud--the rushing forth of men from their tents; The clank of cavalry--the strange celerity of forming ranks--the slender bugle note; The sound of horses hoofs departing--saddles, arms, accoutrements.

chapter-400	To the Sun-Set Breeze Ah, whispering, something again, unseen, Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat; Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art, (Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest--and this is of them,) So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within--thy soothing fingers my face and hands, Thou, messenger--magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me, I feel the sky, the prairies vast--I feel the mighty northern lakes, I feel the ocean and the forest--somehow I feel the globe itself Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone--haply from endless store, (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,) Art thou not universal concretes distillation? Hast thou no soul?

chapter-401	Old Chants An ancient song, reciting, ending, Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All, Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee, Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads, And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet. (Of many debts incalculable, Haply our New Worlds chieftest debt is to old poems.) Ever so far back, preluding thee, America, Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia, The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian, The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene, The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur, The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays, Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee, with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand Thou! Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them, Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.

chapter-402	A Christmas Greeting Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready; A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hall! (Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles, impedimentas, Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and the faith;) To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee from us the expectant eye, Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well, The true lesson of a nations light in the sky, (More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,) The height to be superb humanity.

chapter-403	Sounds of the winter too, Sounds of the winter too, Sunshine upon the mountains--many a distant strain From cheery railroad train--from nearer field, barn, house, The whispering air--even the mute crops, garnerd apples, corn, Childrens and womens tones--rhythm of many a farmer and of flail, An old mans garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet, Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

chapter-404	A Twilight Song As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, Musing on long-passd war-scenes--of the countless buried unknown soldiers, Of the vacant names, as unindented airs and seas--the unreturnd, The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-filld trenches Of gatherd from dead all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up, From wooded Maine, New-Englands farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas, (Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames, You million unwrit names all, all--you dark bequest from all the war, A special verse for you--a flash of duty long neglected--your mystic roll strangely gatherd here, Each name recalld by me from out the darkness and deaths ashes, Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South, Embalmd with love in this twilight song.

chapter-405	When the full-grown poet came, When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay he is mine alone; --Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them.

chapter-406	Osceola When his hour for death had come, He slowly raisd himself from the bed on the floor, Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, Calld for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt--then lying down, resting moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) Fixd his look on wife and little children--the last: (And here a line in memory of his name and death.)

chapter-407	A Voice from Death A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee, We mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee, The gatherd thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never found or gatherd. War, death, cataclysm like this, America, Thou ever-darting Globe! Thou waters that encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! thou! thou! Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to eer forget thee! mighty, elemental throes,

chapter-408	A Persian Lesson For his oerarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi, In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air, On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden, Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches, Spoke to the young priests and students. Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all, all--immanent in every life and object, May-be at many and many-a-more removes--yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there. Has the estray wanderd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden? Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life; The something never stilld--never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.

chapter-409	The Commonplace The commonplace I sing; How cheap is health! how cheap nobility! Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust; The open air I sing, freedom, toleration, (Take here the mainest lesson--less from books--less from the schools,) The common day and night--the common earth and waters, Your farm--your work, trade, occupation, The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.

chapter-410	

chapter-411	Mirages More experiences and sights, stranger, than youd think for; Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset, Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in plain sight, Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts, (Account for it or not--credit or not--it is all true, And my mate there could tell you the like--we have often confabd People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be, Farms and dooryards of home, paths borderd with box, lilacs in corners, Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons, Glum funerals, the crape-veild mother and the daughters, Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box, Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves, Now and then markd faces of sorrow or joy, (I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,) Showd to me--just to the right in the sky-edge,

chapter-412	L. of G.s Purport Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,) But add, fuse, complete, extend--and celebrate the immortal and the good. Haughty this song, its words and scope, To span vast realms of space and time, Evolution--the cumulative--growths and generations. Begun in ripend youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all--war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age. I sing of life, yet mind me well of death: To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years-Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

chapter-413	The Unexpressd How dare one say it? After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, Vaunted Ionias, Indias--Homer, Shakspere--the long, long times thick dotted roads, areas, The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars--Natures pulses reapd, All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration, All ages plummets dropt to their utmost depths, All human lives, throats, wishes, brains--all experiences utterance; After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, Still something not yet told in poesys voice or print--something lacking, (Who knows? the best yet unexpressd and lacking.)

chapter-414	Grand Is the Seen Grand is the seen, the light, to me--grand are the sky and stars, Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary; But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far--more lasting thou than they.

chapter-415	Unseen Buds Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well, Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping; Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting, (On earth and in the sea--the universe--the stars there in the heavens,) Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless, And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

chapter-416	Farewell dear mate, dear love! Im going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Good-bye my Fancy. So Good-bye my Fancy. So Good-bye my Fancy. Now for my last--let me look back a moment; The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping. Long have we lived, joyd, caressd together; Delightful!--now separation--Good-bye my Fancy. Yet let me not be too hasty, Long indeed have we lived, slept, filterd, become really blended Then if we die we die together, (yes, well remain one,) If we go anywhere well go together to meet what happens, May-be well be better off and blither, and learn something, May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?) May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning--so now finally, Good-bye--and hail! my Fancy.