The household wreck'd, the husband and the wife, the engulf'd forger in his forge, The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud, The gather'd thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never found or gather'd. Then after burying, mourning the dead, (Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the past, here new musing,) A day-a passing moment or an hour-America itself bends low, War, death, cataclysm like this, America, E'en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet. Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air! 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 the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to e'er forget thee! For I too have forgotten, (Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye mighty, elemental throes, In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy'd. A PERSIAN LESSON. FOR his o'erarching 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, "Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all, all—is immanent in every life and object, May-be at many and many-a-more removes-yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there. "Has the estray wander'd 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 still'd-never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? "It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception." THE COMMONPLACE. THE Commonplace I sing; How cheap is health! how cheap nobility! 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, The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all. "THE ROUNDED CATALOGUE DIVINE COMPLETE.” [Sunday, - Went this forenoon to church. A college professor, Rev. Dr. -, gave us a fine sermon, during which I caught the above words; but the 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 loathesome 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. 2 MIRAGES. (Noted verbatim after a supper-talk out doors in Nevada with two old miners.) 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 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 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, 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, 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. How dare one say it? THE UNEXPRESS'D. After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, Vaunted Ionia's, India's-Homer, Shakspere-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' utter ance; 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! 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. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY! GOOD-BYE 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, Now for my last-let me look back a moment; 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 it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now finally, Good-bye-and hail! my Fancy. |