Something there is more immortal even than the stars, Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. PATROLING BARNEGAT Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?) Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting, That savage trinity warily watching. BY THE ROADSIDE WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns be fore me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, I SIT AND LOOK OUT I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women, I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth, I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners, I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest, I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon, See, hear, and am silent. A FARM PICTURE Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding, THE RUNNER On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner, He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs, He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs, HAST NEVER COME TO THEE AN HOUR Hast never come to thee an hour, A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? These eager business aims-books, politics, art, amours, To utter nothingness? DRUM-TAPS SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK Poet. My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute, I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen'd and blinded, My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand, Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner! Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them, You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money, May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast ;) O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships, Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues henceforth I see you, but you as Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars,) Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun, measuring the sky, (Passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child, While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift ;) O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious, Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me, So loved-O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night! Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all - (ab houses, I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only, Flapping up there in the wind. RISE O DAYS FROM YOUR FATHOMLESS DEEPS I Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour'd what the earth gave me, Long I roam'd the woods of the north, long I watch'd Niagara pouring, I travel'd the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus, I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea, I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm, I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over, I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds, Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!) Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning, Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; These, and such as these, I, elate, saw saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful, All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me, Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious. 2 'Twas well, O soul-'twas a good preparation you gave me, Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill, Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us, Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities, Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring, Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed inexhaustible?) What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of the mountains and sea? What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen ? Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds ? Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage, Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain'd; What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here, |