Leaves of Grass

THE DISMANTLED SHIP.

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,

On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and
hawser'd tight,

Lies rusting, mouldering.

NOW PRECEDENT SONGS, FAREWELL.

Now precedent songs, farewell-by every name farewell, (Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons,

From ups and downs-with intervals-from elder years, mid-age, or youth,)

"In Cabin'd Ships," or "Thee Old Cause" or "Poets to Come" Or "Paumanok," "Song of Myself," "Calamus," or "Adam," Or "Beat! Beat! Drums!" or "To the Leaven'd Soil they Trod,"

Or "Captain! My Captain!" "Kosmos," "Quicksand Years," or "Thoughts,"

"Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood," and many, many more unspecified,

From fibre heart of mine-from throat and tongue-(My life's hot pulsing blood,

The personal urge and form for me-not merely paper, automatic type and ink,)

Each song of mine-each utterance in the past-having its long, long history,

Of life or death, or soldier's wound, of country's loss or safety, (O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared indeed to that!

What wretched shred e'en at the best of all !)

AN EVENING LULL.

After a week of physical anguish,

Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,

Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,
Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.*

* The two songs on this page are eked out during an afternoon, June, 1888, in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. Of course no reader and probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional and solemn action as these involve to me. I feel in them an end and close of all.

OLD AGE'S LAMBENT PEAKS.

The touch of flame-the illuminating fire-the loftiest look r last,

O'er city, passion, sea-o'er prairie, mountain, wood-the earth itself;

The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight,
Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;

The calmer sight-the golden setting, clear and broad:

So much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan,

Bro't out by them alone-so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before;

The lights indeed from them-old age's lambent peaks.

AFTER THE SUPPER AND TALK.

After the supper and talk-after the day is done,
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,

(So hard for his hand to release those hands-no more will ther meet,

No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young, A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)

Shunning, postponing severance-seeking to ward off the last word ever so little,

E'en at the exit-door turning-charges superfluous calling backe'en as he descends the steps,

Something to eke out a minute additional-shadows of nightl deepening,

Farewells, messages lessening-dimmer the forthgoer's visage and form,

Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness-loth, O so loth to de part !

Garrulous to the very last.