Poets unnamed — artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs,
Love’s unresponse — a chorus of age’s complaints — hope’s last words,
Some suicide’s despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and
never again return.
On to oblivion then!
On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!
On for your time, ye furious debouche!
[V] And Yet Not You Alone
And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
Nor you, ye lost designs alone — nor failures, aspirations;
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;
Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again — duly the hinges turning,
Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
The rhythmus of Birth eternal.
[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In
Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
All throbs, dilates — the farms, woods, streets of cities — workmen at work,
Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing — steamers’ pennants
of smoke — and under the forenoon sun,
Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
inward bound,
Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves
By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself,
In every crest some undulating light or shade — some retrospect,
Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas — scenes ephemeral,
The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead,
Myself through every by-gone phase — my idle youth — old age at hand,
My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,
By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,
And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble — some
wave, or part of wave,
Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.
[VIII] Then Last Of All
Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:
Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.
Election Day, November, 1884
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara — nor you, ye limitless prairies — nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite — nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones — nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes — nor
Mississippi’s stream:
— This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name — the still
small voice vibrating — America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d — sea-board and inland —
Texas to Maine — the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West — the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling — (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the
peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity — welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify — while the heart
pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
With husky-haughty lips, O sea!
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,
Thy brooding scowl and murk — thy unloos’d hurricanes,
Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears — a lack from all
eternity in thy content,
(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee
greatest — no less could make thee,)
Thy lonely state — something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet
never gain’st,
Surely some right withheld — some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of
freedom-lover pent,
Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,
By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
And undertones of distant lion roar,
(Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear — but now, rapport for once,
A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)
The first and last confession of the globe,
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,
Thou tellest to a kindred soul.
Death of General Grant
As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,
From that great play on history’s stage eterne,
That lurid, partial act of war and peace — of old and new contending,