Gorgeous clouds of the sunset ! drench

with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me ! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! Stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house

or street or public assembly! Sound out, voices of young men ! loudly

and musically call me by my nighest name!

Live, old life! play the part that looks

back on the actor or actress !

Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it! Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;

Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;

Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air; Receive the summer sky, you water, and

faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you! Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the

shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit water!

Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters!

Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly

lowered at sunset !

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories, sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon laterisen and swollen as if with tears, From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, From the thousand responses of my never to cease,

heart

From the myriad thence-aroused words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok,

When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,

Up this seashore in some briers, Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together,

And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

And every day the he-bird to and fro rear at hand,

And every day the she-bird crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,

Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,

The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,

I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,

Listened long and long.

Listened to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,

Following you, my brother.

Soothe! soothe! soothe!

Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,

But my love soothes not me, not me.

The aria sinking,

All else continuing, the stars shining, The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,

With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,

On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray and rustling,

The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching,

The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting, The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,

The strange tears down the cheeks coursing, The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,

To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drown'd secret hissing,

To the outsetting bard.

Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?

For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for, I

awake,

And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,

A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

O you singers solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,

O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you, Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,

Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,

Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,

By the sea under the yellow and sagging

Which I do not forget,

But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,

That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray beach,

With the thousand responsive songs at random,

My own songs awaked from that hour, And with them the key, the word up from the waves,

The word of the sweetest song and all songs,

That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,

(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside)

The sea whispered me.

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD

THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm,

Waking renewed on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst,

SKIRTING the river road (my forenoon walk, my rest),

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Till o'er the river poised, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,

A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.

I SEE before me now a travelling 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 scattered 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.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain
lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths— for you the shores acrowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.