AND YET NOT YOU ALONE. And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb, I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again-duly the hinges turning, Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself, PROUDLY THE FLOOD COMES IN. Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, men at work, Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing-steamers' pennants of smoke and under the forenoon sun, Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love. BY THAT LONG SCAN OF WAVES. By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas-scenes ephemeral, The long past war the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, [at hand, Myself through every bygone phase-my idle youth-old age My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemblesome wave, or part of wave, Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean. THEN LAST OF ALL. Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning: Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song. Election Day, November, 1884. IF I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 'T would not be you, Niagara-nor you, ye limitless prairies nor your huge rifts of cañons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite-nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon's white cones-nor Huron's belt of mighty lakesnor Mississippi's stream: This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name-the still small voice vibrating- America's choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen- the act itself the main, the The final ballot-shower from East to West- the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling-(a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's :) the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity-welcoming the darker odds, the dross:— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails. Witb busky-baugbty Lips, O Sea! WITH husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, [the sun, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of Thy brooding scowl and murk-thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears - a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state-something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st, Surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent, Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers, By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, And undertones of distant lion roar, [once, (Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear—but now, rapport for A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) The first and last confession of the globe, Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, Thou tellest to a kindred soul. Death of General Grant. As one by one withdraw the lofty actors, From that great play on history's stage eterne, That lurid, partial act of war and peace—of old and new con tending, Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; All past and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing, Victor's and vanquish'd - Lincoln's and Lee's-now thou with them, Man of the mighty days—and equal to the days! Thou from the prairies! — tangled and many-vein'd and hard has been thy part, To admiration has it been enacted! Red Jacket (from Aloft). (Impromptu on Buffalo City's monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.) UPON this scene, this show, Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, (Nor in caprice alone-some grains of deepest meaning,) Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds' blended shapes, As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul, Product of Nature's sun, stars, earth direct-a towering human form, In hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a half-ironical smile curving its phantom lips, Like one of Ossian's ghosts looks down. Wasbington's Monument, February, 1885. Ан, not this marble, dead and cold: Far from its base and shaft expanding - the round zones circling, comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the world's, the continents' entire not yours alone, America, Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot, his tent, Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the same - the heir legitimate, continued ever, VOL. II-20 |