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Now a black demon, belching fire and steam,

Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream,

And all thy desecrated hulk

Must landlocked lie, a helpless bulk,
To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe 's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air
To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare,
Shot-shattered to have met thy doom
Where thy last lightnings cheered the
gloom,

Than here be safe in dangerless despair. 30

Thy drooping symbol to the flagstaff clings,

Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings,

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That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good;

1 This poem is the last, so far as is known, written by Mr. Lowell. He laid it aside for revision, leaving two of the verses incomplete. In a pencilled fragment of the poem the first verse appears as follows:

Strong, simple, silent, such are Nature's Laws. In the final copy, from which the poem is now printed, the verse originally stood:

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WALT WHITMAN

[The selections from Whitman are printed by the kind permission of Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co., the authorized publishers of his works; and of Messrs. Horace L. Traubel and Thomas B. Harned, his literary executors.]

THERE WAS A CHILD WENT

FORTH 1

THERE was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phobe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

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The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him, Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms

and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,

1 In the first edition, 1855, without title. In the second edition, 1856, called Poem of The Child That Went Forth and Always Goes Forth Forever and For"ever.'

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They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,

The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by, The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the

sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how, Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets if they are not flashes and specks what are they?

30

The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries, The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between, Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off,

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