Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith, Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale. Not for success alone, Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over, (Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not war;) In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic, But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be, They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee, While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with immor tal blent,) VOL. II.-16 Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind, The soul, its destinies. The soul, its destinies, the real real, (Purport of all these apparitions of the real;) In thee America, the soul, its destinies, Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd, (by these thyself solidifying,) Thou mental, moral orb-thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! The Present holds thee not-for such vast growth as thine, For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, A Paumanok Picture. Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankledeep in the water, pois'd on strong legs, The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them, Strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water, the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers. From Noon to Starry Night Tbou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. THOU Orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue; Hear me illustrious! Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee, Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy touching-distant beams enough, Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation. (Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive, I know before the fitting man all Nature yields, Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice and thou O sun, As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic, I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.) Thou that with fructifying heat and light, O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South, O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kan ada's woods, O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space, Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas, Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally, Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions, Strike through these chants. Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these, Prepare the later afternoon of me myself-prepare my lengthen ing shadows, Prepare my starry nights. Faces. I SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country by-road, lo, such faces! Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality, The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face, The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural law yers and judges broad at the back-top, The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens, The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face, The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face, [many children, The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of The face of an amour, the face of veneration, The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock, The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face, A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper, A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder. Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces and faces and faces, I see them and complain not, and am content with all. 2 Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finalè ? This now is too lamentable a face for man, Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it, Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole. This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat. This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea, Its sleepy and wabbling icebergs crunch as they go. This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label, And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's lard. |