OLD AGE ECHOES. TO SOAR IN FREEDOM AND IN FULLNESS OF POWER. I HAVE not so much emulated the birds that musically sing, I have abandon'd myself to flights, broad circles. The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess'd me than the canary or mocking-bird. I have not felt to warble and trill, however sweetly, I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition. THEN SHALL PERCEIVE. IN softness, languor, bloom, and growth, Thine eyes, ears, all thy sense- thy loftiest attribute that takes cognizance of beauty, Shall rouse and fill- then shall perceive ! - all THE FEW DROPS KNOWN. Or heroes, history, grand events, premises, myths, poems, A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few death odors as from graves, from Egypt — What are they to the long and copious retrospect of antiquity? ONE THOUGHT EVER AT THE FORE. ONE thought ever at the fore That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space, All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination. WHILE BEHIND ALL FIRM AND ERECT. WHILE behind all, firm and erect as ever, Undismay'd amid the rapids — amid the irresistible and deadly urge, Stands a helmsman, with brow elate and strong hand. A KISS TO THE BRIDE. Marriage of Nelly Grant, May 21, 1874. SACRED, blithesome, undenied, With benisons from East and West, And salutations North and South, Through me indeed to-day a million hearts and hands, For the New World, through me, the old, old wedding greeting: Unto a Nation's loving kiss. NAY, TELL ME NOT TO-DAY THE PUBLISH'D SHAME. NAY, tell me not to-day the publish'd shame, The merciless reports still branding forehead after forehead, To-day to me the tale refusing, Turning from it from the white capitol turning, Unpublish'd, unreported. Through all your quiet ways, or North or South, you Equal States, you honest farms, Your million untold manly healthy lives, or East or West, city or country, Your noiseless mothers, sisters, wives, unconscious of their good, Your mass of homes nor poor nor rich, in visions rise (even your excellent poverties,) Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-denials, graces, Your endless base of deep integrities within, timid but certain, Your blessings steadily bestow'd, sure as the light, and still, (Plunging to these as a determin'd diver down the deep hidden waters), These, these to-day I brood upon - all else refusing, these will I con, To-day to these give audience. SUPPLEMENT HOURS. SANE, random, negligent hours, Sane, easy, culminating hours, After the flush, the Indian summer, of my life, Away from Books-away from Art- the lesson learn'd, pass'd o'er, Soothing, bathing, merging all the sane, magnetic, Now for the day and night themselves the open air, Now for the fields, the seasons, insects, trees - the rain and snow, Where wild bees flitting hum, Or August mulleins grow, or winter's snowflakes fall, The silent sun and stars. OF MANY A SMUTCH'D DEED REMINISCENT. FULL of wickedness, I — of many a smutch'd deed reminiscent of worse deeds capable, Yet I look composedly upon nature, drink day and night the joys of life, and await death with perfect equanimity, Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love and because of his boundless love for me. To be at all TO BE AT ALL. (Cf. Stanza 27, Song of Myself, p. 52.) what is better than that? I think if there were nothing more developed, the clam in its callous shell in the sand were august enough. I am not in any callous shell; I am cased with supple conductors, all over They take every object by the hand, and lead it within me; They are thousands, each one with his entry to himself; They are always watching with their little eyes, from my head to my feet; One no more than a point lets in and out of me such bliss and magnitude, I think I could lift the girder of the house away if it lay between me and whatever I wanted. DEATH'S VALLEY. To accompany a picture; by request. "The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” from the painting by George Inness. NAY, do not dream, designer dark, Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire; I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having glimpses of it, Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too. For I have seen many wounded soldiers die, After dread suffering - have seen their lives pass off with smiles; And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old; and seen the infant die; The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors; And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty; And I myself for long, O Death, have breath'd my every breath Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee. And out of these and thee, I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee, Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark-for I do not fear thee, Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot), Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling tides, and trees and flowers and grass, And the low hum of living breeze-and in the midst God's beautiful eternal right hand, Thee, holiest minister of Heaven-thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all, Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call'd life, Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death. ON THE SAME PICTURE. Intended for first stanza of "Death's Valley." YE, well I know 'tis ghastly to descend that valley : Preachers, musicians, poets, painters, always render it, Philosophs exploit the battlefield, the ship at sea, the myriad beds, all lands, All, all the past have enter'd, the ancientest humanity we know, Syria's, India's, Egypt's, Greece's, Rome's; Till now for us under our very eyes spreading the same to-day, Grim, ready, the same to-day, for entrance, yours and mine, Here, here 'tis limn'd. A THOUGHT OF COLUMBUS. THE mystery of mysteries, the crude and hurried ceaseless flame, spontaneous, bearing on itself. The bubble and the huge, round, concrete orb ! A breath of Deity, as thence the bulging universe unfolding! Haply the widest, farthest evolutions of the world and man. Thousands and thousands of miles hence, and now four centuries back, A mortal impulse thrilling its brain cell, Reck'd or unreck'd, the birth can no longer be postpon'd: Only a silent thought, yet toppling down of more than walls of brass or stone. (A flutter at the darkness' edge as if old Time's and Space's secret near revealing.) A thought! a definite thought works out in shape. Four hundred years roll on. The rapid cumulus-trade, navigation, war, peace, democracy, roll on; The restless armies and the fleets of time following their leader the old camps of ages pitch'd in newer, larger areas, The tangl'd, long-deferr'd eclaircissement of human life and, hopes boldly begins untying, As here to-day up-grows the Western World. (An added word yet to my song, far Discoverer, as ne'er before sent back to son of earth - |