minister included in his “rounded catalogue” letter and spirit, only the esthetic things, and entirely ignored what I name in the following.)
The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas’d,
The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,
The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,
Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute;
(What is the part the wicked and the loathsome bear within earth’s orbic scheme?)
Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,
The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.
More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d 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 shop-fronts,
(Account for it or not—credit or not—it is all true,
And my mate there could tell you the like—we have often confab’d about it,)
People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,
Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in corners,
Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,
Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,
Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,
Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,
(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
Show’d to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge,
Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.
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 ripen’d 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.
The Unexpress’d
How dare one say it?
After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s—Homer, Shakespeare—the long, long times’ thick dotted roads, areas,
The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars—Nature’s pulses reap’d,
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 poesy’s voice or print—something lacking,
(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)
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? of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.
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.
Goodbye My Fancy!
Goodbye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Goodbye 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, joy’d, caress’d together;
Delightful!—now separation—Goodbye my Fancy.
Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we’ll 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,
Goodbye—and hail! my Fancy.
Old Age Echoes
(Posthumous Additions)
To Soar in Freedom and in Fullness of Power
I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,
I have abandon’d myself to flights, broad circles.
The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the canary or mocking-bird.
I have not felt to warble and trill, however sweetly,
I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition.
Then Shall Perceive
In softness, languor, bloom, and growth,
Thine eyes, ears, all thy sense—thy loftiest attribute—all that takes cognizance of beauty,
Shall rouse and fill—then shall perceive!
The Few Drops Known
Of heroes, history, grand events, premises, myths, poems,
The few drops known must stand for oceans of the unknown,
On this beautiful and thick peopl’d earth, here and there a little specimen put on record,
A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few death odors as from graves, from Egypt—
What are they to the long and copious retrospect of antiquity?
One Thought Ever at the Fore
One thought ever at the fore—
That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,
All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination.
While Behind All Firm and Erect
While behind all, firm and erect as ever,
Undismay’d amid the rapids—amid the irresistible and deadly urge,
Stands a helmsman, with brow elate and strong hand.
Sacred, blithesome, undenied,
With benisons from East and West,
And salutations North and South,
Through me indeed to-day a million hearts and hands,
Wafting a million loves, a million soulfelt prayers;
—Tender and
