Page images
PDF
EPUB

We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side,

They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,

Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,

Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as

we are.

MIRACLES

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with

the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim-the rocks- the motion of the waves -the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?

SPARKLES FROM THE WHEEL

Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,

Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause

aside with them.

By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,

A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,

Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,

With measur'd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but firm hand,

Forth issue then in copious golden jets,

Sparkles from the wheel.

The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect

me,

The sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band of leather,

Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here absorb'd and arrested,

The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets,

The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the lightpress'd blade,

Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,

Sparkles from the wheel.

THE PRAIRIE STATES

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,

Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,

With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,

By all the world contributed freedom's and law's and thrift's society,

The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations,

To justify the past.

PASSAGE TO INDIA

Singing my days,

I

Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong light works of engineers,

Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)

In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,

The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;

Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,

The Past! the Past! the Past!

The Past-the dark unfathom'd retrospect!

The teeming gulf the sleepers and the shadows!

The past the infinite greatness of the past!

[ocr errors]

For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

(As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on,

So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)

Passage O soul to India!

2

Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.

Not you alone proud truths of the world,

Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,

But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables,

The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends,

The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;

O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun!

O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!

You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold!

Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams!
You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!
You too with joy I sing.

Passage to India!

Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first ?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,

The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing,

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,

You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
You, not for trade or transportation only,

But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul.

[blocks in formation]

Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,

I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd,

I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie's leading the van,

I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance,

I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd,

The gigantic dredging machines.

In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)

I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,

I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers,

I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,

I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,

I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes,

I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts,

I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains,

I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,

I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base, I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,

I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,

Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,

Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,

Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,

The road between Europe and Asia.

(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream! Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)

Passage to India!

4

Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.

Along all history, down the slopes,

« PreviousContinue »