Now I absorb immortality and peace,

I admire death and test propositions.

How plenteous! how spiritual! how resumé !

The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content.

I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited,

I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes.

Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them,

And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far along as those of the earth,

Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.

OI see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

THOUGHT.

As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing,

To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a wreck at sea,

Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,

Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President, Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder'd off the Northeast coast and going down of the steamship Arctic going down,

Of the veil'd tableau - women gather'd together on deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close-O the

moment !

A huge sob a few bubbles—the white foam spirting up-and then the women gone,

Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on- and I now pondering, Are those women indeed gone?

Are souls drown'd and destroy'd so?

Is only matter triumphant?

THE LAST INVOCATION.

AT the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,

From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the wellclosed doors,

Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly — be not impatient,

(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,

Strong is your hold O love.)

AS I WATCH'D THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGHING.

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,

Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;

(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

PENSIVE AND FALTERING.

PENSIVE and faltering,

The words the Dead I write,

For living are the Dead,

(Haply the only living, only real,

And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD.

I

HOU Mother with thy equal brood,

TH

Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only A special song before I go I'd sing o'er all the rest,

For thee, the future.

I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,

I'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,

I'd show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd.

The paths to the house I seek to make,

But leave to those to come the house itself.

Belief I sing, and preparation;

As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,

But greater still from what is yet to come,

Out of that formula for thee I sing.

As a strong bird on pinions free,

2

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think of thee America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee.

The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,

Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library;

But an odor I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois prairie,

With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or Florida's glades,

Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,

With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite,

And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea

sound,

That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted
for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,
Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou
transcendental Union !

By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,
Thought of man justified, blended with God,
Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!
Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!

3

Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

To formulate the Modern-out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,

Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art. (Recast, may-be discard them, end them-may-be their work i done, who knows?)

By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead,

To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain,

Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long. Thou carefully prepared by it so long-haply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it,

It to eventuate in thee - the essence of the by-gone time contain'd in thee,

Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee;

Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,
The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.

4

Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,

Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only,
The Past is also stored in thee,

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone,

Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy

spars,

With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant ; Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, tho carriest great companions,

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.

5

Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,

Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,

Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,

Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession

issuing,

Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength

and life,

World of the real-world of the twain in one,

World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone,

Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials,

By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent,

Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here,

(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come,)

Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I define

thee,

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,

I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the

past,

I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe,

But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee, I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now,

I merely thee ejaculate!

Thee in thy future,

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit,

Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all,

Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity,

Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd so long upon the mind of man,

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man; Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male

thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,

(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,

endear'd alike, forever equal,)

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but cer

tain,