Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye… Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling a… Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I… voice, Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant o…
As if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone, walking here… But the one I thought was with me, as n… one I loved, that caress’d me, As I lean and look through the glimmeri…
I need no assurances, I am a man who is… I do not doubt that from under the feet… am cognizant of, are now looking faces I… and actual faces, I do not doubt but the majesty and beaut…
Quicksand years that whirl me I know no… Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give… Only the theme I sing, the great and st… One’s-self must never give way—that is t… all is sure,
That music always round me, unceasing, u… I did not hear, But now the chorus I hear and am elated… A tenor, strong, ascending with power an… daybreak I hear,
What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the t… Or coming in, to avoid the bars and foll… Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard th… Whom, in a little boat, putting off and…
A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it… Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast su… It launch’d forth filament, filament, fi… Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly spe…
O living always, always dying! O the burials of me past and present, O me while I stride ahead, material, vi… O me, what I was for years, now dead, (… O to disengage myself from those corpses…
From all the rest I single out you, hav… You are to die—let others tell you what… I am exact and merciless, but I love yo… Softly I lay my right hand upon you, yo… I do not argue, I bend my head close an…
Night on the prairies, The supper is over, the fire on the grou… The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in th… I walk by myself—I stand and look at th… realized before.
As I sit with others at a great feast,… To my mind, (whence it comes I know not… at sea, Of certain ships, how they sail from por… wafted kisses, and that is the last of t…
At the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful fortress’… From the clasp of the knitted locks, fro… doors, Let me be wafted.
As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing, Or the sower sowing in the fields, or th… I saw there too, O life and death, your… (Life, life is the tillage, and Death i…
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.)
Thou Mother with thy equal brood, Thou varied chain of different States,… A special song before I go I’d sing o’e… For thee, the future. I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nati…
Two boats with nets lying off the sea—be… Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a th… they drop the join’d seine—ends in the w… The boats separate and row off, each on… beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot… Flooding with sheeny light the gray beac… The sibilant near sea with vistas far an… And tawny streaks and shades and spreadi… O sun of noon refulgent! my special word…
Sauntering the pavement or riding the co… Faces of friendship, precision, caution,… The spiritual-prescient face, the always… The face of the singing of music, the gr… judges broad at the back-top,
Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange… Hovering unseen in air, vibrates caprici… I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert… Now pouring, whirling like a tempest rou… Now low, subdued, now in the distance lo…
Thee for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, t… Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual t… Thy black cylindric body, golden brass a… Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and co…
O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed S… O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and… to me! O dear to me my birth-things—all moving… was born—the grains, plants, rivers,
I was asking for something specific and… Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal na… Now I see what there is in a name, a wo… self-sufficient, I see that the word of my city is that w…
O me, man of slack faith so long, Standing aloof, denying portions so long… Only aware to-day of compact all-diffuse… Discovering to-day there is no lie or fo… grows as inevitably upon itself as the t…
That which eludes this verse and any ver… Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in cle… Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wea… And yet the pulse of every heart and lif… Which you and I and all pursuing ever e…
Who has gone farthest? for I would go f… And who has been just? for I would be t… And who most cautious? for I would be m… And who has been happiest? O I think it… happier than I,
Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retrea… Ah you foes that in conflict have overco… (For what is my life or any man’s life b… the incessant war?) You degradations, you tussle with passio…
Of Public Opinion; Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later… passive! How certain and final!) Of the President with pale face asking… himself, What will the people say at las…
They shall arise in the States, They shall report Nature, laws, physiol… They shall illustrate Democracy and the… They shall be alimentive, amative, perce… They shall be complete women and men, th…
Weave in, weave in, my hardy life, Weave yet a soldier strong and full for… Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like… Weave lasting sure, weave day and night… weave, tire not,
Out of the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks and heap’d-up s… Out of that old entire European debris,… Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, t… Lo, Freedom’s features fresh undimm’d l…
By broad Potomac’s shore, again old ton… (Still uttering, still ejaculating, cans… Again old heart so gay, again to you, yo… returning, Again the freshness and the odors, again…
From far Dakota’s canyons, Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sio… Haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a tr… The battle-bulletin, The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fa…
In midnight sleep of many a face of angu… Of the look at first of the mortally wou… Of the dead on their backs with arms ext… I dream. Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountai…
Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars! Long yet your road, fateful flag—long ye… bloody death, For the prize I see at issue at last is… All its ships and shores I see interwov…
(To U. S. G. return’d from his World’… What best I see in thee, Is not that where thou mov’st down histo… Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike vic… Or that thou sat’st where Washington sa…
(Written in Platte Canyon, Colorado) Spirit that form’d this scene, These tumbled rock-piles grim and red, These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks, These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, t…
As I walk these broad majestic days of… (For the war, the struggle of blood fini… Against vast odds erewhile having glorio… Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in tim… Perhaps to engage in time in still more…
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free fligh… Away from books, away from art, the day… Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazin… lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.
As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud, A dread beyond of I know not what darke… I shall go forth, I shall traverse the States awhile, but… Perhaps soon some day or night while I…
Years of the modern! years of the unperf… Your horizon rises—I see it parting awa… I see not America only—I see not only… nations preparing; I see tremendous entrances and exits—I…
Ashes of soldiers South or North, As I muse retrospective murmuring a cha… The war resumes, again to my sense your… And again the advance of the armies. Noiseless as mists and vapors,
Of these years I sing, How they pass and have pass’d through co… parturitions, How America illustrates birth, muscular… fulfilment, the absolute success, despit…
Splendor of ended day floating and filli… Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past, Inflating my throat, you divine average, You earth and life till the last ray gle… Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,
As at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable… To memories of my mother, to the divine… To her, buried and gone, yet buried not,… (I see again the calm benignant face fre…
The business man the acquirer vast, After assiduous years surveying results,… Devises houses and lands to his children… funds for a school or hospital, Leaves money to certain companions to bu…
Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard th… Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the fo… battle-fields gazing; As she call’d to her earth with mournful… stalk’d:
Nor alone those camps of white, old comr… When as order’d forward, after a long ma… Footsore and weary, soon as the light le… Some of us so fatigued carrying the gun… in our tracks,
The sobbing of the bells, the sudden dea… The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the… (Full well they know that message in the… Full well return, respond within their b… reverberations,)
As they draw to a close, Of what underlies the precedent songs—of… Of the seed I have sought to plant in t… Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year,… (For them, for them have I lived, in th…
Joy! shipmate—joy! (Pleas’d 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!
The untold want, by life and land ne’er… Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek…
What are those of the known, but to asce… And what are those of life, but for Dea…
These Carols, sung to cheer my passage… For completion, I dedicate to the Invis…
Now finale to the shore, Now land and life finale and farewell, Now Voyager depart, (much, much for the… Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er t… Cautiously cruising, studying the charts…
To conclude, I announce what comes afte… I remember I said before my leaves spra… I would raise my voice jocund and strong… When America does what was promis’d, When through these States walk a hundre…
My city’s fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous… A rocky founded island—shores where ever… going, hurrying sea waves.
Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad,… steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing,… dark-gliding in the distance.
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak, Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (no… The tossing waves, the foam, the ships i… The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps… of waves,
To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration va… To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on t… To calm, devoted engineers—to over-arden… their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without…
A carol closing sixty-nine—a resume—a re… My lines in joy and hope continuing on t… Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom,… Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies,… Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north…
