As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
As I walk these broad majestic days of peace, (For the war, the struggle of blood finish"d, wherein, O terrific Ideal, Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,) Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce, The announcements of recognized things, science, The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
I see the ships, (they will last a few years,) The vast factories with their foremen and workmen, And hear the indors.e.m.e.nt of all, and do not object to it.
But I too announce solid things, Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight, They stand for realities-all is as it should be.
Then my realities; What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.
A Clear Midnight
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.
BOOK x.x.xIII. SONGS OF PARTING
As the Time Draws Nigh As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud, A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.
I shall go forth, I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long, Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will suddenly cease.
O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? -and yet it is enough, O soul; O soul, we have positively appear"d-that is enough.
Years of the Modern
Years of the modern! years of the unperform"d!
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas, I see not America only, not only Liberty"s nation but other nations preparing, I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races, I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world"s stage, (Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?) I see Freedom, completely arm"d and victorious and very haughty, with Law on one side and Peace on the other, A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste; What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions, I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken, I see the landmarks of European kings removed, I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;) Never were such sharp questions ask"d as this day, Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a G.o.d, Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the ma.s.ses no rest!
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the Pacific, the archipelagoes, With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war, With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all geography, all lands; What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, pa.s.sing under the seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming en-ma.s.se? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim, The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights; Years prophetical! the s.p.a.ce ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms, Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me, This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams O years!
Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake;) The perform"d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperform"d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.
Ashes of Soldiers
Ashes of soldiers South or North, As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought, The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes, And again the advance of the armies.
Noiseless as mists and vapors, From their graves in the trenches ascending, From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, From every point of the compa.s.s out of the countless graves, In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or single ones they come, And silently gather round me.
Now sound no note O trumpeters, Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses, With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah my brave hors.e.m.e.n!
My handsome tan-faced hors.e.m.e.n! what life, what joy and pride, With all the perils were yours.)
Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn, Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the m.u.f.fled beat for burial, Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.
But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade, Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless, The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive, I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.
Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet, Draw close, but speak not.
Phantoms of countless lost, Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions, Follow me ever-desert me not while I live.
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living-sweet are the musical voices sounding, But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over-and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love, Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers, Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.
Perfume all-make all wholesome, Make these ashes to nourish and blossom, O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain, That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew, For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.
Thoughts
1 Of these years I sing, How they pa.s.s and have pa.s.s"d through convuls"d pains, as through parturitions, How America ill.u.s.trates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people-ill.u.s.trates evil as well as good, The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one"s-self, How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity, How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results, (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.)
How the great cities appear-how the Democratic ma.s.ses, turbulent, willful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on, How society waits unform"d, and is for a while between things ended and things begun, How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun, And how the States are complete in themselves-and how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be convuls"d, and serve other parturitions and transitions, And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic ma.s.ses too, serve-and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors, serves, And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.
2 Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births, Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to impregnable and swarming places, Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be, Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and the rest, (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,) Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for-and of what all sights, North, South, East and West, are, Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind; Of the temporary use of materials for ident.i.ty"s sake, Of the present, pa.s.sing, departing-of the growth of completer men than any yet, Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the Mississippi flows, Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey"d and unsuspected, Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of inalienable homesteads, Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and sweet blood, Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there, Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the Anahuacs, Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,) Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there, (O it lurks in me night and day-what is gain after all to savageness and freedom?)
Song at Sunset
Splendor of ended day floating and filling me, Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past, Inflating my throat, you divine average, You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, Natural life of me faithfully praising things, Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
Ill.u.s.trious every one!
Ill.u.s.trious what we name s.p.a.ce, sphere of unnumber"d spirits, Ill.u.s.trious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect, Ill.u.s.trious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body, Ill.u.s.trious the pa.s.sing light-ill.u.s.trious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky, Ill.u.s.trious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.