Walt Whitman
¶[1810-1892]
813 One's-self I Sing
¶Of physiology from top to toe I sing,Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse—I say the Form complete is worthier far,The Female equally with the Male I sing.
¶Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,The Modern Man I sing.
814 Beat! Beat! Drums!
¶BEAT! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,Into the school where the scholar is studying;Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now withhis bride,Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering hisgrain,So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.[1403]Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers mustsleep in those beds,No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would theycontinue?Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
¶Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties,Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting thehearses,So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
¶8/5 VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD ONE NIGHT
¶VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night;When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I shallnever forget,One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach'd up as you lay on theground,Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle,Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made my way,Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son ofresponding kisses (never again on earth responding),Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderatenight-wind,Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-fieldspreading,Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed.Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin inmy hands,Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearestcomrade—not a tear, not a word.
p. 1404¶Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier,
¶As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
¶Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely
¶meet again,)
¶Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form,
¶Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully
¶under feet,
¶And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in
¶his rude-dug grave I deposited,
¶Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battlefield dim,
¶Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never again on earth responding), Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.
816 Pioneers! O Pioneers!
¶COME my tan-faced children,Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶O you youths, Western youths,So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Have the elder races halted?Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶All the past we leave behind,We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,[1405]Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶We detachments steady throwing,Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶We primeval forests felling,We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Colorado men are we,From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶From Nebraska, from Arkansas,Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental bloodintervein'd,All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶O resistless restless race!O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all IO I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Raise the mighty mother mistress,Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend yourheads all),Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶See my children, resolute children,By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,Pioneers! O pioneers![1406]On and on the compact ranks,With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶0 to die advancing on!Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶All the pulses of the world,Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Life's involv'd and varied pageants,All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶All the hapless silent lovers,All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶I too with my soul and body,We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Lo, the darting bowling orb!Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶These are of us, they are with us,All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo waitbehind,We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,Pioneers! O pioneers![1407]O you daughters of the West!O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Minstrels latent on the prairies!(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Not for delectations sweet,Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Do the feasters gluttonous feast?Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Has the night descended ?Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding onour way?Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,Pioneers! O pioneers!
¶Till with sound of trumpet,Far, far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,Pioneers! O pioneers!
8/7 Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
¶WHO are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet?Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?
¶('Tis while our army lines Carolina's sands and pines,Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia corn'st to me,As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)
¶Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder'd,A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.[1408]No further does she say, but lingering all the day,Her high-borne turban'd head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.
¶What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?
818 the Wound-dresser
¶1
¶AN old man bending I come among new faces,Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentlesswar,But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd myself,To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,Of unsurpass'd heroes (was one side so brave? the other was equallybrave;)Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us ?What stays with you latest and deepest ? of curious panics,Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
¶2
¶O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
¶What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking
¶recalls,
¶Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with sweat and dust, In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush
¶of successful charge,
¶Enter the captur'd works—yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade, Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers'
¶joys
¶(Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was
¶content).
¶But in silence, in dreams' projections,
¶While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
p. 1409¶So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,With hinged knees returning I enter the doors (while for you up there,Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart).
¶Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,Straight and swift to my wounded I go,Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground,Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital,To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again.
¶I onward go, I stop,With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that wouldsave you.
¶3On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)The crush'd head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away),The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through Iexamine,Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggleshard(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!In mercy come quickly).
¶From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side-fallinghead,His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,And has not yet look'd on it.
¶I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,And the yellow-blue countenance see.[1410]I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, sooffensive,
¶While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.
¶I am faithful, I do not give out,The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,These and more I dress with impassive hand (yet deep in my breast afire, a burning flame).4Thus in silence in dreams' projections,Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested,Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips).
819 Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
¶1
¶GIVE me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teachingcontent,Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi,and I looking up at the stars,Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I canwalk undisturb'd,Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should nevertire,Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the worlda rural domestic life,Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own earsonly,Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primalsanities![1411]These demanding to have them (tired with ceaseless excitement, andrack'd by the war-strife),These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up,Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me foreverfaces;(Oh I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for).
¶2
¶Keep your splendid silent sun,Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and endlessalong the trottoirs!Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades andlovers by the thousand!Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the hand everyday!Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan!Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound ofthe trumpets and drums!(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away, flush'dand reckless,Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very old,worn, marching, noticing nothing;)Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torchlightprocession!The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagonsfollowing;People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets (even thesight of the wounded),[1412]Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
820 O Captain! My Captain!
¶O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.
¶0 Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;Here Captain! dear father!This arm beneath your head!It is some dream that on the deck,You've fallen cold and dead.
¶My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;Exult O shores, and ring O bells!But I with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.
¶WHEN lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,I mourn'd,and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,And thought of him I love.[1413]2
¶O powerful western fallen star!O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!O great star disappear'd—O the black murk that hides the star!O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
¶3In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings,Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong Ilove,With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,A sprig with its flower I break.
¶Solitary the thrush,The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding tne settlements,Sings by himself a song.
¶Song of the bleeding throat,Death's outlet song of life (for well dear brother I know,If thou wast not granted to sing thou would'st surely die).
¶5Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd fromthe ground, spotting the gray debris,Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endlessgrass,Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in thedark-brown fields uprisen,Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,Night and day journeys a coffin.[1414]6
¶Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black,With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing,With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbaredheads,With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strongand solemn,With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin,The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these youjourney,With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,Here, coffin that slowly passes,I give you my sprig of lilac.
¶7(Nor for you, for one alone,Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for youO sane and sacred death.
¶All over bouquets of roses,O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
¶8O western orb sailing the heaven,Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side (while the otherstars all look'd on),As we wander'd together the solemn night (for something I know notwhat kept me from sleep),[1415]As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full youwere of woe,As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparentnight,As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of thenight,As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
¶9
¶Sing on there in the swamp,0 singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,I hear, I come presently, I understand you,But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
¶10
¶O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
¶Sea-winds blown from east and west,Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till thereon the prairies meeting,These and with these and the breath of my chant,I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
¶11
¶O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
¶Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid andbright,With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,burning, expanding the air,With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves ofthe trees prolific,
p. 1416¶In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-
¶dapple here and there,
¶With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and
¶shadows,
¶And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
¶returning.
¶12
¶Lo, body and soul—this land,My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,and the ships,The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio'sshores and flashing Missouri,And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.
¶Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,The gentle soft-born measureless light,The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
¶Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.O liquid and free and tender!O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!You only I hear—yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
¶Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and thefarmers preparing their crops,In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms),[1417]Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voicesof children and women,The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy withlabor,And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with itsmeals and minutia of daily usages,And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—lo,then and there,Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
¶Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands ofcompanions,I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three,And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
¶From deep secluded recesses,From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,Came the carol of the bird.
¶And the charm of the carol rapt me,As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
¶Come lovely and soothing death,Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,In the day, in the night, to all, to each,Sooner or later delicate death.
¶Prais'd be the fathomless universe,For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.[1418]Dar\ mother always gliding near with soft feet,Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
¶I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
¶Approach strong deliveress,When it is so, when thou hast ta\en them 1 joyously sing the dead,Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.From me to thee glad serenades,Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread s%y are fitting,And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
¶The night in silence under many a star,The ocean shore and the hus\y whispering wave whose voice I /(now,And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
¶Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairieswide,Over the dense-pacl(d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
¶15To the tally of my soul,Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
¶Loud in the pines and cedars dim,Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp perfume,And I with my comrades there in the night.
¶And I saw askant the armies,I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I sawthem,[1419]And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
¶I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,But I saw they were not as was thought,They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.
¶16
¶Passing the visions, passing the night,Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding thenight,Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet againbursting with joy,Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
¶I cease from my song for thee,From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing withthee,O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
¶Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, forthe dead I loved so well,[1420]For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for hisdear sake,Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
822 Prayer of Columbus
¶A BATTER'D, wreck'd old man
¶Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,I take my way along the island's edge,Venting a heavy heart.
¶I am too full of woe!Haply I may not live another day;I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,Report myself once more to Thee.
¶Thou knowest my years entire, my life,My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations,Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee,Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them,Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not,Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.
¶All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee,My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee;Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee.O I am sure they really came from Thee,The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,These sped me on.[1421]By me and these the work so far accomplish'd,By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd,By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.
¶The end I know not, it is all in Thee,Or small or great I know not—haply what broad fields, what lands,Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know,Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools,Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossomthere.
¶One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;That Thou O God my life hast lighted,With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.
¶My terminus near,The clouds already closing in upon me,The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost,I yield my ships to Thee.
¶My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd,Let the old timbers part, I will not part,I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,Thee, Thee at least I know.
¶Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?What do I know of life? what of myself?I know not even my own work past or present,Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,Mocking, perplexing me.
¶And these things I see suddenly, what mean they ?As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,[1422]Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,And on the distant waves sail countless ships,And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.
82j 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 well-closeddoors,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.