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,
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.

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 !

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.

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,
So Good-bye 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-Good-bye 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,

Good-bye-and hail! my Fancy.

OLD AGE ECHOES

(POSTHUMOUS ADDITIONS)

AN EXECUTOR'S DIARY NOTE, 1891.

I am

I said to W. W. to-day: "Though you have put the finishing touches on the 'Leaves,' closed them with your good-by, you will go on living a year or two longer and writing more poems. The question is, what will you do with these poems when the time comes to fix their place in the volume?" "Do with them? not unprepared -I have even contemplated that emergency-I have a title in reserve: Old Age Echoes-applying not so much to things as to echoes of things, reverberant, an aftermath." "You have dropt enough by the roadside, as you went along, from different editions, to make a volume. Some day the world will demand to have that put together somewhere." "Do you think it?" Certainly. Should you put it under ban?" "Why should I-how could I? So far as you may have anything to do with it I place upon you the injunction that whatever may be added to the Leaves' shall be supplementary, avowed as such, leaving the book complete as I left it, consecutive to the point I left off, marking always an unmistakable, deep down, unobliteratable division line. In the long run the world will do as it pleases with the book. I am determined to have the world know what I was pleased to do."

Here is a late personal note from W. W.: "My tho't is to collect a lot of prose and poetry pieces-small or smallish mostly, but a few larger-appealing to the good will, the heart-sorrowful ones not rejected—but no morbid ones given."

There is no reason for doubt that A Thought of Columbus, closing "Old Age Echoes," was W. W's last deliberate composition, dating December, 1891.