Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling

  Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
  Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
  The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
  And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
  O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.

  Hear me illustrious!
  Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
  Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy
      touching-distant beams enough,
  Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.

  (Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
  I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
  Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—and
      thou O sun,
  As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of
      flame gigantic,
  I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

  Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
  O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South,
  O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains,
      Kanada's woods,
  O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
  Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas,
  Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
  Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of
      thy million millions,
  Strike through these chants.

  Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
  Prepare the later afternoon of me myself—prepare my lengthening shadows,
  Prepare my starry nights.





Faces

       1
  Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces!
  Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
  The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,
  The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers
      and judges broad at the back-top,
  The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved
      blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens,
  The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face,
  The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or
      despised face,
  The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
      many children,
  The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
  The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,
  The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,
  A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper,
  A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

  Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces
      and faces and faces,
  I see them and complain not, and am content with all.

       2
  Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their
      own finale?

  This now is too lamentable a face for a man,
  Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,
  Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

  This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage,
  Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

  This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
  Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

  This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,
  And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.

  This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
  Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show
      nothing but their whites,
  Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in nails,
  The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he
      speculates well.

  This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
  And this is some murderer's knife with a half-pull'd scabbard.

  This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
  An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

       3
  Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas'd and
      cadaverous march?
  Well, you cannot trick me.

  I see your rounded never-erased flow,
  I see 'neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

  Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,
  You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

  I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they had at
      the asylum,
  And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,
  I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
  The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,
  And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
  And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm'd, every inch
      as good as myself.

       4
  The Lord advances, and yet advances,
  Always the shadow in front, always the reach'd hand bringing up the
      laggards.

  Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming,
  I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way,
  I hear victorious drums.

  This face is a life-boat,
  This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,
  This face is flavor'd fruit ready for eating,
  This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

  These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
  They show their descent from the Master himself.

  Off the word I have spoken I except not one—red, white, black, are
      all deific,
  In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.

  Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
  Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,
  I read the promise and patiently wait.

  This is a full-grown lily's face,
  She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets,
  Come here she blushingly cries, Come nigh to me limber-hipp'd man,
  Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
  Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
  Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.

       5
  The old face of the mother of many children,
  Whist! I am fully content.

  Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
  It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
  It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them.

  I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
  I heard what the singers were singing so long,
  Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.

  Behold a woman!
  She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more
      beautiful than the sky.

  She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
  The sun just shines on her old white head.

  Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
  Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with
      the distaff and the wheel.

  The melodious character of the earth,
  The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go,
  The justified mother of men.





The Mystic Trumpeter

       1
  Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,
  Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.

  I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,
  Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,
  Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.

       2
  Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds
  Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life
  Was fill'd with aspirations high, unform'd ideals,
  Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,
  That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,
  Gives out to no one's ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,
  That I may thee translate.

       3
  Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,
  While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
  The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,
  A holy calm descends like dew upon me,
  I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,
  I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;
  Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,
  Floating and basking upon heaven's lake.

       4
  Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,
  Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.

  What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,
  Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,
      the troubadours are singing,
  Arm'd knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy Graal;
  I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy armor
      seated on stately champing horses,
  I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;
  I see the Crusaders' tumultuous armies—hark, how the cymbals clang,
  Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high.

       5
  Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
  Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,
  Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
  The heart of man and woman all for love,
  No other theme but love—knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.

  O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!
  I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that
      heat the world,
  The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,
  So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death;
  Love, that is all the earth to lovers—love, that mocks time and space,
  Love, that is day and night—love, that is sun and moon and stars,
  Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
  No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.

       6
  Blow again trumpeter—conjure war's alarums.

  Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,
  Lo, where the arm'd men hasten—lo, mid the clouds of dust the glint
      of bayonets,
  I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the
      smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;
  Nor war alone—thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every
      sight of fear,
  The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder—I hear the cries for help!
  I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below deck the
      terrible tableaus.

       7
  O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,
  Thou melt'st my heart, my brain—thou movest, drawest, changest
      them at will;
  And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,
  Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,
  I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the
      whole earth,
  I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes
      all mine,
  Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds
      and hatreds,
  Utter defeat upon me weighs—all lost—the foe victorious,
  (Yet 'mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,
  Endurance, resolution to the last.)

      8
  Now trumpeter for thy close,
  Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
  Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
  Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
  Give me for once its prophecy and joy.

  O glad, exulting, culminating song!
  A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes,
  Marches of victory—man disenthral'd—the conqueror at last,
  Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy!
  A reborn race appears—a perfect world, all joy!
  Women and men in wisdom innocence and health—all joy!
  Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy!
  War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing but joy left!
  The ocean fill'd with joy—the atmosphere all joy!
  Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
  Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
  Joy! joy! all over joy!





To a Locomotive in Winter

  Thee for my recitative,
  Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
  Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
  Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,
  Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,
      shuttling at thy sides,
  Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
  Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front,
  Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
  The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
  Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of
      thy wheels,
  Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
  Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
  Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
  For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
  With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
  By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,
  By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

  Fierce-throated beauty!
  Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps
      at night,
  Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake,
      rousing all,
  Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
  (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
  Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
  Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
  To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.





O Magnet-South

  O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!
  O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all
      dear to me!
  O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things and the trees where
      I was born—the grains, plants, rivers,
  Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,
      over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,
  Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the
      Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,
  O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their
      banks again,
  Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the
      Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings
      or dense forests,
  I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the
      blossoming titi;
  Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast
      up the Carolinas,
  I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,
      the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the
      graceful palmetto,
  I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,
      and dart my vision inland;
  O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
  The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,
  The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged
      with mistletoe and trailing moss,
  The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in
      these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the
      fugitive has his conceal'd hut;)
  O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable
      swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the
      alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and
      the whirr of the rattlesnake,
  The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,
      singing through the moon-lit night,
  The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
  A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn,
      slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful
      ears each well-sheath'd in its husk;
  O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;
  O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
  O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and
      never wander more.





Mannahatta

  I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
  Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

  Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
      musical, self-sufficient,
  I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
  Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
  Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
      island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
  Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,
 ............