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O ME! O LIFE!

O ME! O life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

TO A PRESIDENT.

ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn'd of Nature - of the politics of Nature you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not seen that only such as they are for these States, And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these States.

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

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TO RICH GIVERS.

WHAT you give me I cheerfully accept,

A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendezvous with my poems,

A traveler's lodging and breakfast as I journey through the States, - why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them?

For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe.

THE DALLIANCE OF THE EAGLES.

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse
flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.

ROAMING IN THOUGHT.

(After reading HEGEL.)

ROAMING in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,

And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.

A FARM PICTURE.

THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,

And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.

A CHILD'S AMAZE.

SILENT and amazed even when a little boy,

I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,

As contending against some being or influence.

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,
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.

WOMEN sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful but the old are more beautiful than the young.

MOTHER AND BABE.

I SEE the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, The sleeping mother and babe-hush'd, I study them long and long.

THOUGHT.

Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;

As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men.

VISOR'D.

A MASK, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,

Concealing her face, concealing her form,

Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,

Falling upon her even when she sleeps.

THOUGHT.

Or Justice - as if Justice could be any thing but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors,

As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.

GLIDING O'ER ALL.

GLIDING o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul
Death, many deaths I'll sing.

--

not life alone,

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?

THOUGHT.

Or Equality—as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself— as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

TO OLD AGE.

I SEE in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea.

LOCATIONS AND TIMES.

LOCATIONS and times- what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home?

Forms, colors, densities, odors—what is it in me that corresponds with them?

OFFERINGS.

A THOUSAND perfect men and women appear,

Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings.

TO THE STATES,

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.

WHY reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight - scum floating atop of the waters,

Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your arctic freezings!)

Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President?

Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for reasons;

(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake,

South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

DRUM-TAPS.

F

FIRST O SONGS FOR A PRELUDE.

IRST O songs for a prelude,

Lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my city,

How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,

How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang, (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!

Ò strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis ! O truer than steel!) how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand,

How you sprang

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How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead,

How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of soldiers,)

How Manhattan drum-taps led.

Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,

Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and turbulent city,

Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
With her million children around her, suddenly,

At dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement.

A shock electric, the night sustain'd it,

Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads.

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