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 lonia'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, Now for my last - let me look back a moment; Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together; 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, Maybe we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, Maybe 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. |