BRAVO, PARIS EXPOSITION! ADD to your show, before you close it, France, With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods, machines and ores, Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid, (We grand-sons and great-grand-sons do not forget your grandsires,) From fifty Nations and nebulous Nations, compacted, sent oversea to-day, America's applause, love, memories and good-will. INTERPOLATION SOUNDS. [General Philip Sheridan was buried at the Cathedral, Washington, D.C., August, 1888, with all the pomp, music, and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic service.] OVER and through the burial chant, Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests, To me come interpolation sounds not in the show-plainly to me, crowding up the aisle and from the window, Of sudden battle's hurry and harsh noises-war's grim game to sight and ear in earnest ; The scout call'd up and forward-the general mounted and his aids around him—the new-brought word—the instantaneous order issued; The rifle crack-the cannon thud-the rushing forth of men from their tents; The clank of cavalry-the strange celerity of forming ranksthe slender bugle note; The sound of horses' hoofs departing-saddles, arms, accoutre ments. *NOTE.-CAMDEN, N. J., August 7, 1888.-Walt Whitman asks the New York Herald "to add his tribute to Sheridan:" "In the grand constellation of five or six names, under Lincoln's Presidency, that history will bear for ages in her firmament as marking the last life-throbs of secession, and beaming on its dying gasps, Sheridan's will be bright. One consideration rising out of the now dead soldier's example as it passes my mind, is worth taking notice of. If the war had continued any long time these States, in my opinion, would have shown and proved the most conclusive military talents ever evinced by any nation on earth. That they possess'd a rank and file ahead of all other known in points of quality and limitlessness of number are easily admitted. But we have, too, the eligibility of organizing, handling and officering equal to the other. These twc, with modern arms, transportation, and inventive American genius, would make the United States, with earnestness, not only able to stand the whole world, but conquer that world united against us." TO THE SUN-SET BREEZE. Ан, whispering, something again, unseen, Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, (Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyor. the rest and this is of them,) So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within-thy soothin fingers on my face and hands, Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me, (Distances balk'd-occult medicines penetrating me from hea to foot,) I feel the sky, the prairies vast-I feel the mighty norther lakes, I feel the ocean and the forest-somehow I feel the globe itsel swift-swimming in space; Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone-haply from endles store, God-sent, (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to sense,) Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell, Art thou not universal concrete's distillation? Law's, all As tronomy's last refinement? Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee? OLD CHANTS. An ancient song, reciting, ending, Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All, Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee, Accept for me, thou saidst, the elder ballads, And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet. (Of many debts incalculable, Haply our New World's chieftest debt is to old poems.) Ever so far back, preluding thee, America, Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia, The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian, The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Naza rene, The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds, Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds, The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays, Shakspere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson, As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences, The great shadowy groups gathering around, Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee, Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand and word, ascending, Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent with their music, Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them, A CHRISTMAS GREETING. [From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern. 1889-90.] WELCOME, Brazilian brother-thy ample place is ready; A loving hand-a smile from the north-a sunny instant hail! (Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles, impedimentas, Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and the faith ;) To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck-to thee from us the expectant eye, Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well, The true lesson of a nation's light in the sky, (More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,) The height to be superb humanity. SOUNDS OF THE WINTER. SOUNDS of the winter too, Sunshine upon the mountains-many a distant strain From cheery railroad train-from nearer field, barn, house, An old man's garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet, Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt. A TWILIGHT SONG. As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes-of the countless buried r known soldiers, Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea's-the return'd, The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and deep-fill'd trenches Of gather'd dead from all America, North, South, East, W whence they came up, From wooded Maine, New-England's farms, from fertile Pezz sylvania, Illinois, Ohio, From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolina Texas, (Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noisea flickering flames, Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising-I hear t rhythmic tramp of the armies ;) You million unwrit names all, all-you dark bequest from all th war, A special verse for you-a flash of duty long neglected-y mystic roll strangely gather'd here, Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and dea:: ashes, Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, f. many a future year, Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North & South, Embalm'd with love in this twilight song. WHEN THE FULL-GROWN POET CAME. WHEN the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with a its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unres onciled, Nay, he is mine alone; -Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and to each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly he.. ing hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, OSCEOLA. [When I was nearly grown to manhood in Brooklyn, New York (middle of 1838), I met one of the return'd U.S. Marines from Fort Moultrie, S.C., and had long talks with him—learn'd the occurrence below described - death of Osceola. The latter was a young, brave, leading Seminole in the Florida war of that time-was surrender'd to our troops, imprison'd, and literally died of "a broken heart" at Fort Moultrie. He sicken'd of his confinement-the doctor and officers made every allowance and kindness possible for him; then the close.] WHEN his hour for death had come, He slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor, Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, Call'd for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt-then lying down, resting a moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) Fix'd his look on wife and little children-the last : (And here a line in memory of his name and death.) A VOICE FROM DEATH. [The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.] A VOICE from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, With sudden, indescribable blow-towns drown'd-humanity by thousands slain, The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, Dash'd pell-mell by the blow-yet usher'd life continuing on, (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, A suffering woman saved—a baby safely born!) Although I come and unannounc'd, in horror and in pang, In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) I too a minister of Deity. Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee, |