A Boston Ballad-1854 Europe-the 72nd and 73rd Years of These States A Hand-Mirror Gods Germs Thoughts 228 230 231 232 232 233 When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer Perfections O Me! O Life! To a President I Sit and Look Out To Rich Givers The Dalliance of the Eagles Roaming in Thought A Farm Picture A Child's Maze 233 233 234 234 234 235 235 235 236 236 236 236 2,36 237 Visor'd 237 To the States-To Identify the 16th, 17th or 18th Presidentiads DRUM-TAPS-continued Come Up from the Fields, Father Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night: A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods Long, too Long, America Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun Dirge for Two Veterans Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice I Saw Old General at Bay Ethiopia Saluting the Colours World, Take Good Notice How Solemn as One by One As I lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado Delicate Cluster To a Certain Civilian Lo, Victress on the Peaks Spirit Whose Work is Done When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd O Captain! My Captain! Hush'd be the Camps Today This Dust was Once the Man -By Blue Ontario's Shore . Reversals INDEX OF FIRST LINES Page 258 259 260 261 262 263 263 263 266 266 268 269 269 270 271 271 272 272 272 272 273 273 273 274 274 275 275 276 276 277 278 286 287 287 288 303 305 LEAVES OF GRASS INSCRIPTIONS ONE'S-SELF I SING ONE'S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person, Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, AS I PONDER'D IN SILENCE As I ponder'd in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, The genius of poets of old lands, As to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal songs, And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, Be it so, then I answer'd, I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last), the field the world, For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers. IN CABIN'D SHIPS AT SEA IN cabin'd ships at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves, Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine, Where joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night, By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read, İn full rapport at last. Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts, Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said, The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet, We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, Then falter not, O book, fulfil your destiny, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith, Consort to every ship that sails, sail you! Bear forth to them folded my love (dear marines, for you I fold it here in every leaf); Speed on my book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart the imperious waves, |