To conclude, I announce what comes after me. I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only, I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble, I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant. I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd. I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry,) JOY, SHIPMATE, JOY! So Longi THE UNTOLD WANT. The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find. Now trumpeter for thy close, Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet, Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope, O glad, exulting, culminating song! A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes, Marches of victory-man disenthral'd-the conqueror at last, Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy! A reborn race appears-a perfect world, all joy! Women and men in wisdom innocence and health—all joy! Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy ! War, sorrow, suffering gone-the rank earth purged-nothing but joy left! The ocean fill'd with joy-the atmosphere all joy! Joy! joy in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life! Enough to merely be enough to breathe! Joy! joy all over joy! The Mystic Trumpeter. PORTALS. What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the Unknown? And what are those of life but for Death? Darest thou now O soul, DAREST THOU NOW O SOUL. Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow? No map there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. I know it not O soul, Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land. Till when the ties loosen, All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us. Then we burst forth, we float, In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them, Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul. The soft voluptuous opiate-shades, TWILIGHT. The sun just gone, the eager light dispelled(I too will soon be gone, dispelled.) A haze-nirvana-rest and night-oblivion. WALT WHITMAN AMONG THE SOLDIERS. [ALL that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its issues; it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was a place of education, it was like a season of religious revival. He watched Lincoln going daily to his work: he studied and fraternized with young soldiery passing to the front; above all, he walked the hospitals, reading the Bible; a patient, helpful, reverend man, full of kind speeches. His memoranda of this period are almost bewildering to read. From one point of view they seem those of a district visitor; from another, they look like the harmless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More than one woman, on whom I tried the experiment, immediately claimed the writer for a fellow-woman. More than one literary purist might identify him as a shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary faculty of style. And yet the story touches home; and if you are of the weeping order of mankind, you will certainly find your eyes fill with tears of which you have no reason to be ashamed. There is only one way to characterize a work of this order, and that is to quote.-R. L. Stevenson, in "Familiar Studies of Men and Books."] DECORATION DAY always brings to my mind pictures of the "hospital part of the drama of 1861-65," as portrayed by Walt Whitman in his "Specimen Days and Collect" (pp. 26-81). These become more and more vivid as the years go by, and reveal more distinctly Walt Whitman |