Prepare the later afternoon of me myself-prepare my lengthen

ing shadows,

Prepare my starry nights.

A RIDDLE SONG.

THAT which eludes this verse and any verse,

Unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest mind,

Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,

And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,

Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,

Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted,
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd,
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
Behind the mountain and the wood,

Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage,
It and its radiations constantly glide.

In looks of fair unconscious babes,

Or strangely in the coffin'd dead,

Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,

As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,
Hiding yet lingering.

Two little breaths of words comprising it.

Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.

How ardently for it!

How many ships have sail'd and sunk for it!

How many travelers started from their homes and ne'er return'd!

How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!

What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it!

How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it—

and shall be to the end!

How all heroic martyrdoms to it!

How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth! How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and land, have drawn men's eyes,

Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the

cliffs,

Or midnight's silent glowing northern lights unreachable.

Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,

The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,
Aud heaven at last for it.

FROM FAR DAKOTA'S CANONS.

FROM far Dakota's cañons,

(June 25, 1876.)

Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,

Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,

The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses for
breastworks,

The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly maintain'd,

O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee !
As sitting in dark days,

Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope,

From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,

(The sun there at the centre though conceal'd,

Electric life forever at the centre,)

Breaks forth a lightning flash.

Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,

I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a bright sword in thy hand,

Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds, (I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,) Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious,

After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,

Thou yieldest up thyself.

WHAT BEST I SEE IN THEE.

(To U. S. G., return'd from his World's Tour.)

WHAT best I see in thee,

Is not that where thou mov'st down history's great highways, Ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike victory's dazzle,

Or that thou sat'st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm'd upon,

Who walk'd with kings with even pace the round world's promenade;

But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,

Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the

front,

Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world's promenade,

We all so justified.

SPIRIT THAT FORM'D THIS SCENE.

(Written in Platte Cafion, Colorado.)

SPIRIT that form'd this scene,

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,

These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,
I know thee, savage spirit-we have communed together,
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;
Was't charged against my chants they had forgotten art?
To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace-
column and polish'd arch forgot?

But thou that revelest here-spirit that form'd this scene,
They have remember'd thee.

A CLEAR MIDNIGHT.

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best.

Night, sleep, and the stars.

AS AT THY PORTALS ALSO DEATH.

As at thy portals also death,

Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,

To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin,

I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin ;)

To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best,

I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
Aud set a tombstone here.

THE SOBBING OF THE BELLS.

(Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881.)

THE sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere, The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,

(Full well they know that message in the darkness,

Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the sad reverberations,)

The passionate toll and clang-city to city, joining, sounding,

passing,

Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.

NOW FINALE TO THE SHORE.

NOW FINALE TO THE SHORE.

First published in "Passage to India," 1870.

Now finale to the shore.!

Now, land and life, finale, and farewell!

Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store ;) Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas,

Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,

Duly again to port, and hawser's tie, returning :
-But now obey, thy cherish'd, secret wish,
Embrace thy friends-leave all in order;
To port, and hawser's tie, no more returning,
Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!

10

SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS, Etc.

First published in "Drum-Taps," 1865.

SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries,

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring ;1

Forth from the army, the war emerging-a book I have made,"
The words of my book nothing-the drift of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the in-
tellect,*

But you, ye untold latencies, will thrill to every page;

1 Drum-Taps reads "which was lacking among you all, yet needed," etc.

2 Drum-Taps. For line 3 reads "A book I have made for your dear sake, O Soldiers,

And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades."

3 Drum-Taps. For "drift" reads "life."

After line 5, Drum-Taps reads " But you will feel every word, O Libertad! Arm'd Libertad!

It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,

With joy with you, O soul of Man,”