WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH⁸⁹

DAREST THOU NOW O SOUL

Darest thou now O soul,

Walk out with me toward the unknown region,

Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

 

No map there, nor guide,

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,

Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

 

I know it not O soul,

Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,

All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.

 

Till when the ties loosen,

All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,

Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

 

Then we burst forth, we float,

In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,

Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH⁹⁰

Whispers of heavenly death murmur’d I hear,

Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,

Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,

Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever

flowing,

(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human

tears?)

 

I see, just see skyward, great cloud masses,

Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,

With at times a half-dimm’d sadden’d far-off star,

Appearing and disappearing.

 

(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;

On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,

Some soul is passing over.)

CHANTING THE SQUARE DEIFIC⁹¹

—1—

Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the

sides,

Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,

Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah

am I,

Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;

Not Time affects me—I am Time, old, modern as any,

Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous

judgments,

As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,

Aged beyond computation, yet ever new, ever with those mighty

laws rolling,

Relentless I forgive no man—whoever sins dies—I will have that

man’s life;

Therefore let none expect mercy—have the seasons, gravitation,

the appointed days, mercy? no more have I,

But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days

that forgive not,

I dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least

remorse.

—2—

Consolator most mild, the promis’d one advancing,

With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,

Foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and

poems,

From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes—lo! Hermes I—lo!

mine is Hercules’ face,

All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,

Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and

crucified, and many times shall be again,

All the world have I given up for my dear brothers’ and sisters’

sake, for the soul’s sake,

Wending my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with

the kiss of affection,

For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and

all-enclosing charity,

With indulgent words as to children, with fresh and sane words,

mine only,

Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin’d myself to an

early death;

But my charity has no death—my wisdom dies not, neither early

nor late,

And my sweet love bequeath’d here and elsewhere never

dies.

—3—

Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,

Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,

Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,

With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my

heart, proud as any,

Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to

rule me,

Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many

wiles,

(Though it was thought I was baffled and dispel‘d, and my wiles

done, but that will never be,)

Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly

appearing, (and old ones also,)

Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real

as any,

Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.

—4—

Santa Spirita, breather, life,

Beyond the light, lighter than light,

Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,

Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,

Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including

Saviour and Satan,

Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were

God?)

Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,

(namely the unseen,)

Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I,

the general soul,

Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,

Breathe my breath also through these songs.

OF HIM I LOVE DAY AND NIGHT⁹²

Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was

dead,

And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he

was not in that place,

And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find

him,

And I found that every place was a burial-place;

The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is

now,)

The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,

Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the

dead as of the living,

And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;

And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,

And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream‘d,

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with

them,

And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently

everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should

be satisfied,

And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be

duly render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be

satisfied,

Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.

YET, YET, YE DOWNCAST HOURS

Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,

Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,

Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o‘erweening,

mocking voice,

Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward.

 

Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,

The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm‘d, uncertain,

The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,

Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.

 

I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,

I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,

your mute inquiry,

Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me;

Old age, alarm‘d, uncertain—a young woman’s voice, appealing

to me for comfort;

A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?

AS IF A PHANTOM CARESS’D ME

As if a phantom caress’d me,

I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;

But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore,

the one I loved that caress’d me,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has

utterly disappear‘d,

And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.

ASSURANCES⁹³

I need no assurances, I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own

soul;

I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and

face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not

cognizant of, calm and actual faces,

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent

in any iota of the world,

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,

in vain I try to think how limitless,

I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift

sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day be

eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of

years,

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have

their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and

the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are

provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the

deaths of little children are provided for,

(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the

purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of

them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has

gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at

any time, is provided for in the inherences of things,

I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I

believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

QUICKSAND YEARS

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and

elude me,

Only the theme I sing, the great and strong possess’d soul, eludes

not,

One‘s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that

out of all is sure,

Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally

remains?

When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

THAT MUSIC ALWAYS ROUND ME⁹⁴

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long

untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes

of daybreak I hear,

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense

waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the

universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and

violins, all these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the

exquisite meanings,

I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,

contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other

in emotion;

I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think I

begin to know them.

WHAT SHIP PUZZLED AT SEA

What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?

Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect

pilot needs?

Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,

Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER⁹⁵

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

 

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to

connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form‘d, till the ductile anchor

hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

O LIVING ALWAYS, ALWAYS DYING

O living always, always dying!

O the burials of me past and present,

O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;

O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)

O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and

look at where I cast them,

To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses

behind.

TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,

You are to die—let others tell you what they please, I cannot

prevaricate,

I am exact and merciless, but I love you—there is no escape for you.

 

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,

I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,

I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,

I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,

I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is

eternal, you yourself will surely escape,

The corpse you leave will be but excrementitious.

 

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,

Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,

You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,

You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping

friends, I am with you,

I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,

I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.

NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIES

Night on the prairies,

The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,

The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;

I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now

I never realized before.

 

Now I absorb immortality and peace,

I admire death and test propositions.

How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!

The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the

same content.

 

I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day

exhibited,

I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless

around me myriads of other globes.

 

Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will

measure myself by them,

And now touch’d with the lives of other globes arrived as far along

as those of the earth,

Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth,

I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,

Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to

arrive.

 

O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

THOUGHT

As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is

playing,

To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a

wreck at sea,

Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and

wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,

Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the

President,

Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder’d

off the Northeast coast and going down—of the steamship

Arctic going down,

Of the veil’d tableau—women gather’d together on deck, pale,

heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close—O the

moment!

A huge sob—a few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—and

then the women gone,

Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on—and I now

pondering, Are those women indeed gone?

Are souls drown’d and destroy’d so?

Is only matter triumphant?

THE LAST INVOCATION

At the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,

From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well

closed doors,

Let me be wafted.

 

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,

Set ope the doors O soul.

 

Tenderly—be not impatient,

(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,

Strong is your hold O love.)

AS I WATCH’D THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGHING

As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,

Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,

I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;

(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

PENSIVE AND FALTERING

Pensive and faltering,

The words the Dead I write,

For living are the Dead,

(Haply the only living, only real,

And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD

—1—

Thou Mother with thy equal brood,

Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,

A special song before I go I’d sing o‘er all the rest,

For thee, the future.

 

I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,

I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,

I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be

accomplish’d.

 

The paths to the house I seek to make,

But leave to those to come the house itself.

 

Belief I sing, and preparation;

As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,

But greater still from what is yet to come,

Out of that formula for thee I sing.

—2—

As a strong bird on pinions free,

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,

Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.

 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,

Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,

Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or

indoor library;

But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath

of an Illinois prairie,

With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas

uplands, or Florida’s glades,

Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of

Huron,

With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,

And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea

sound,

That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

 

And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,

Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted

for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,

Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou

transcendental Union!

By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,

Thought of man justified, blended with God,

Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!

Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!

—3—

Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

To formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the

modern,

Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,

(Recast, may-be discard them, end them—may-be their work is

done, who knows?)

By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty

past, the dead,

To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

 

And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World

brain,

Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so

long,

Thou carefully prepared by it so long—haply thou but unfoldest

it, only maturest it,

It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain’d

in thee,

Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with

reference to thee;

Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,

The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.

—4—

Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,

Of value is thy freight, ‘tis not the Present only,

The Past is also stored in thee,

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western

continent alone,

Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy

spars,

With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or

swim with thee,

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou

bear’st the other continents,

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port

triumphant;

Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman,

thou carriest great companions,

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.

-5-

Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,

Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,

Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,

Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,

Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession

issuing,

Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual

strength and life,

World of the real—world of the twain in one,

World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to

identity, body, by it alone,

Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious

materials,

By history’s cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither

sent,

Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be

constructed here,

(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals,

literatures to come,)

Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform‘d, neither do I define

thee,

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,

I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the

past,

I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire

globe,

But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend

thee,

I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now,

I merely thee ejaculate!

 

Thee in thy future,

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen’d

mind, thy soaring spirit,

Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-

moving, fructifying all,

Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great

hilarity,

Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh’d so

long upon the mind of man,

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of

man;

Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male—thee in thy

athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,

(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,

endear’d alike, forever equal,)

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but

certain,

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy

proudest material civilization must remain in vain,)

Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship—thee in no

single bible, saviour, merely,

Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant

within thyself, equal to any, divine as any,

(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars,

nor in thy century’s visible growth,

But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!)

Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies,

students, born of thee,

Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy high original festivals,

operas, lecturers, preachers,

Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed, the

edifice on sure foundations tied,)

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational

joys, thy love and godlike aspiration,

In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung’d orators, thy

sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans,

These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy.

-6-

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good

for thee,

Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,

Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

 

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,

To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,

Set in the sky of Law.)

 

Land of unprecedented faith, God’s faith,

Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav‘d,

The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now

hence for what it is boldly laid bare,

Open’d by thee to heaven’s light for benefit or bale.

Not for success alone,

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always,

The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than

war shall cover thee all over,

(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its

trials,

For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous

peace, not war;)

In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee,

thou in disease shalt swelter,

The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy

breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,

Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy

face with hectic,

But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount

them all,

Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,

They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,

While thou, Time’s spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still

extricating, fusing,

Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with

immortal blent,)

Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the

body and the mind,

The soul, its destinies.

 

The soul, its destinies, the real real,

(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)

In thee America, the soul, its destinies,

Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!

By many a throe of heat and cold convuls‘d, (by these thyself

solidifying,)

Thou mental, moral orb—thou New, indeed new, Spiritual

World!

The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as thine,

For such unparalleled flight as thine, such brood as thine,

The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.

A PAUMANOK PICTURE

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,

Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of

mossbonkers^br—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,

The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the

beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,

The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,

Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-

deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,

The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,

Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the

water, the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.