PREFACE NOTE TO 2D ANNEX, CONCLUDING L. OF G.—1891 ¹²⁴

Had I not better withhold (in this old age and paralysis of me) such little tags and fringe-dots (maybe specks, stains,) as follow a long dusty journey, and witness it afterward? I have probably not been enough afraid of careless touches, from the first—and am not now—nor of parrot-like repetitions—nor platitudes and the commonplace. Perhaps I am too democratic for such avoidances. Besides, is not the verse-field, as originally plann’d by my theory, now sufficiently illustrated—and full time for me to silently retire?—(indeed amid no loud call or market for my sort of poetic utterance.)

In answer, or rather defiance, to that kind of well-put interrogation, here comes this little cluster, and conclusion of my preceding clusters. Though not at all clear that, as here collated, it is worth printing (certainly I have nothing fresh to write)—I while away the hours of my 72d year—hours of forced confinement in my den—by putting in shape this small old age collation:

Last droplets of and after spontaneous rain,

From many limpid distillations and past showers;

(Will they germinate anything? mere exhalations as they

all are—the land’s and sea‘s—America’s;

Will they filter to any deep emotion? any heart and

brain?)

However that may be, I feel like improving to-day’s opportunity and wind up. During the last two years I have sent out, in the lulls of illness and exhaustion, certain chirps—lingering-dying ones probably (undoubtedly)—which now I may as well gather and put in fair type while able to see correctly—(for my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming, and my brain more and more palpably neglects or refuses, month after month, even slight tasks or revisions.)

In fact, here I am these current years 1890 and ‘91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang’ d conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere—nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign’d, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bang’d conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurr’d old shell ............ (Reader, you must allow a little fun here—for one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, &c., and for another the passing hours (July 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine. And old as I am I feel to-day almost a part of some frolicsome wave, or for sporting yet like a kid or kitten—probably a streak of physical adjustment and perfection here and now. I believe I have it in me perennially anyhow.)

Then behind all, the deep-down consolation (it is a glum one, but I dare not be sorry for the fact of it in the past, nor refrain from dwelling, even vaunting here at the end) that this late-years palsied old shorn and shell-fish condition of me is the indubitable outcome and growth, now near for 20 years along, of too over-zealous, over-continued bodily and emotional excitement and action through the times of 1862, ‘3, ’4 and ‘5, visiting and waiting on wounded and sick army volunteers, both sides, in campaigns or contests, or after them, or in hospitals or fields south of Washington City, or in that place and elsewhere—those hot, sad, wrenching times—the army volunteers, all States,—or North or South—the wounded, suffering, dying—the exhausting, sweating summers, marches, battles, carnage—those trenches hurriedly heap’d by the corpse-thousands, mainly unknown—Will the America of the future—will this vast rich Union ever realize what itself cost, back there after all?—those hecatombs of battle-deaths-Those times of which, O far-off reader, this whole book is indeed finally but a reminiscent memorial from thence by me to you?

SAIL OUT FOR GOOD, EIDOLON YACHT!

Heave the anchor short!

Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth,

O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep

waters,

(I will not call it our concluding voyage,

But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best,

maturest;)

Depart, depart from solid earth—no more returning to these

shores,

Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,

Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities,

gravitation,

Sail out for good, eidólon yacht of me!

LINGERING LAST DROPS

And whence and why come you?

We know not whence, (was the answer,)

We only know that we drift here with the rest,

That we linger’d and lagg‘d—but were wafted at last, and are now

here,

To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

Good-bye ^bv my fancy—(I had a word to say,

But ‘tis not quite the time—The best of any man’s word or say,

Is when its proper place arrives—and for its meaning,

I keep mine till the last.)

ON, ON THE SAME, YE JOCUND TWAIN!

On, on the same, ye jocund twain!

My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age

years,

Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged

in one—combining all,

My single soul—aims, confirmations, failures, joys—Nor single

soul alone,

I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America‘s, haply humanity’s)—

the trial great, the victory great,

A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,

the ancient, medieval,

Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats—

here at the west a voice triumphant—justifying all,

A gladsome pealing cry—a song for once of utmost pride and

satisfaction;

I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde,

(the best no sooner than the worst)—And now I chant

old age,

(My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,

autumn’s spread,

I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses winter-

cool’d the same;)

As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and

love,

Wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,

On, on, ye jocund twain! continue on the same!

MY 71ST YEAR

After surmounting three score and ten,

With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,

My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing

passions of me, the war of ‘63 and ’4,

As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or

haply after battle,

To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,

with vital voice,

Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.

APPARITIONS

A vague mist hanging ‘round half the pages:

(Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,

That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,

non-realities.)

THE PALLID WREATH

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,

Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,

With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch‘d, and the white now gray and

ashy,

One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;

But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?

Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?

No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever;

For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw

thee,

Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:

So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,

It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

AN ENDED DAY

The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,

The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;

Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!^bw

OLD AGE’S SHIP & CRAFTY DEATH’S

From east and west across the horizon’s edge,

Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us:

But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas—a battle-contest yet!

bear lively there!

(Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!)

Put on the old ship all her power to-day!

Crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal studding-sails,

Out challenge and defiance—flags and flaunting pennants

added,

As we take to the open—take to the deepest, freest waters.

TO THE PENDING YEAR

Have I no weapon-word for thee—some message brief and fierce?

(Have I fought out and done indeed the battle?) Is there no shot

left,

For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness?

Nor for myself—my own rebellious self in thee?

Down, down, proud gorge!—though choking thee;

Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter;

Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts.

SHAKSPERE-BACON’S CIPHER ¹²⁵

I doubt it not—then more, far more;

In each old song bequeath‘d—in every noble page or text,

(Different—something unreck’d before—some unsuspected

author,)

In every object, mountain, tree, and star—in every birth and

life,

As part of each—evolv’d from each—meaning, behind the ostent,

A mystic cipher waits infolded.

LONG, LONG HENCE

After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,

Accumulations, rous’d love and joy and thought,

Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers,

Coating, compassing, covering—after ages’ and ages’

encrustations,

Then only may these songs reach fruition.

BRAVO, PARIS EXPOSITION! ¹²⁶

Add to your show, before you close it, France,

With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods,

machines and ores,

Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal

but solid,

(We grand-sons and great-grand-sons do not forget your grand-sires,)

From fifty Nations and nebulous Nations, compacted, sent

oversea to-day,

America’s applause, love, memories and good-will.

INTERPOLATION SOUNDS

[General Philip Sheridan was buried at the Cathedral, Washington, D.C., August, 1888, with all the pomp, music and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic service.]

Over and through the burial chant,

Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests,

To me come interpolation sounds not in the show—plainly to

me, crowding up the aisle and from the window,

Of sudden battle’s hurry and harsh noises—war’s grim game to

sight and ear in earnest;

The scout call’d up and forward—the general mounted and his

aides around him—the new-brought word—the

instantaneous order issued;

The rifle crack—the cannon thud—the rushing forth of men

from their tents;

The clank of cavalry—the strange celerity of forming ranks—the

slender bugle note;

The sound of horses’ hoofs departing—saddles, arms,

accoutrements.^bx

TO THE SUN-SET BREEZE

Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,

Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,

Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing

Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;

Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better

than talk, book, art,

(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond

the rest—and this is of them,)

So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing

fingers on my face and hands,

Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of

me,

(Distances balk‘d—occult medicines penetrating me from head to

foot,)

I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes,

I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself

swift-swimming in space;

Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless

store, God-sent,

(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)

Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told,

and cannot tell,

Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law‘s, all

Astronomy’s last refinement?

Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?

OLD CHANTS

An ancient song, reciting, ending,

Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,

Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,

Accept for me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,

And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.

(Of many debts incalculable,

Haply our New World’s chiefest debt is to old poems.)

Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,

Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,

The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,

The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,

The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,

Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,

The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,

The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,

Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,

The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays,

plays,

Shakspere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,

As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,

The great shadowy groups gathering around,

Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,

Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous

hand and word, ascending,

Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent

with their music,

Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,

Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.

A CHRISTMAS GREETING

From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern, 1889-90.

Welcome, Brazilian brother—thy ample place is ready;

A loving hand—a smile from the north—a sunny instant hail!

(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,

impedimentas,

Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance

and the faith;)

To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck—to thee from

us the expectant eye,

Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,

The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,

(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)

The height to be superb humanity.

SOUNDS OF THE WINTER

Sounds of the winter too,

Sunshine upon the mountains—many a distant strain

From cheery railroad train—from nearer field, barn, house,

The whispering air—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,

Children’s and women’s tones—rhythm of many a farmer and of

flail,

An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out

yet,

Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

A TWILIGHT SONG

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,

Musing on long-pass’d war scenes—of the countless buried

unknown soldiers,

Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea‘s—the

unreturn’d,

The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the

deep-fill’d trenches

Of gather’d dead from all America, North, South, East, West,

whence they came up,

From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile

Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio,

From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas,

Texas,

(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless

flickering flames,

Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising-I hear the

rhythmic tramp of the armies;)

You million unwrit names all, all—you dark bequest from all the

war,

A special verse for you—a flash of duty long neglected—your

mystic roll strangely gather’d here,

Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s

ashes,

Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for

many a future year,

Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or

South,

Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.

WHEN THE FULL-GROWN POET CAME

When the full-grown poet came,

Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its

shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;

But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and

unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone;

—Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each

by the hand;

And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding

hands,

Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,

And wholly and joyously blends them.

OSCEOLA ¹²⁷

[When I was nearly grown to manhood in Brooklyn, New York, (middle of 1838,) I met one of the return’d U.S. Marines from Fort Moultrie, S.C., and had long talks with him—leam’d the occurrence below described—death of Osceola. The latter was a young, brave, leading Seminole in the Florida war of that time—was surrender’ d to our troops, imprison’d and literally died of “a broken heart,” at Fort Moultrie. He sicken’d of his confinement—the doctor and officers made every allowance and kindness possible for him; then the close:]

When his hour for death had come,

He slowly rais’d himself from the bed on the floor,

Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around

his waist,

Call’d for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,)

Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands.

Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting

a moment,

Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand

to each and all,

Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk

handle,)

Fix’d his look on wife and little children—the last:

(And here a line in memory of his name and death.)

A VOICE FROM DEATH ¹²⁸

(The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.)

A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and

power,

With sudden, indescribable blow—towns drown‘d—humanity by

thousands slain,

The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron

bridge,

Dash’d pell-mell by the blow—yet usher’d life continuing on,

(Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris,

A suffering woman saved—a baby safely born!)

Although I come and unannounc‘d, in horror and in pang,

In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this

voice so solemn, strange,)

I too a minister of Deity.

Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee,

We mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee,

The fair, the strong, the good, the capable,

The household wreck‘d, the husband and the wife the engulf’d

forger in his forge,

The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud,

The gather’d thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands

never found or gather’d.

Then after burying, mourning the dead,

(Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the

past, here new musing,)

A day—a passing moment or an hour—America itself bends

low,

Silent, resign‘d, submissive.

War, death, cataclysm like this, America,

Take deep to thy proud prosperous heart.

E‘en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime,

The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love,

From West and East, from South and North and over sea,

Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on;

And from within a thought and lesson yet.

Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air!

Thou waters that encompass us!

Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep!

Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all,

Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all,

incessant!

Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless,

calm,

Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy,

How ill to e‘er forget thee!

For I too have forgotten,

(Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture,

wealth, inventions, civilization,)

Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye

mighty, elemental throes,

In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy’d.

A PERSIAN LESSON

For his o‘erarching and last lesson the graybeard sufi,

In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,

On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,

Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,

Spoke to the young priests and students.

“Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,

Allah is all, all, all—is immanent in every life and object,

May-be at many and many-a-more removes—yet Allah, Allah,

Allah is there.

”Has the estray wander’d far? Is the reason-why strangely

hidden?

Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?

Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every

life;

The something never still‘d—never entirely gone? the invisible

need of every seed?

“It is the central urge in every atom,

(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)

To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,

Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.”

THE COMMONPLACE

The commonplace I sing;

How cheap is health! how cheap nobility!

Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;

The open air I sing, freedom, toleration,

(Take here the mainest lesson—less from books—less from the

schools,)

The common day and night—the common earth and waters,

Your farm—your work, trade, occupation,

The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.

“THE ROUNDED CATALOGUE DIVINE COMPLETE”

[Sunday,—.——Went this forenoon to church. A college professor, Rev. Dr.—, gave us a fine sermon, during which I caught the above words; but the minister included in his “rounded catalogue” letter and spirit, only the esthetic things, and entirely ignored what I name in the following:]

The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas‘d,

The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,

The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,

Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the

dissolute;

(What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within

earth’s orbic scheme?)

Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,

The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.

MIRAGES ¹²⁹

(Noted verbatim after a supper-talk out doors in Nevada with two old miners.)

More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for;

Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before

sunset,

Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather,

in plain sight,

Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shop

fronts,

(Account for it or not—credit or not—it is all true,

And my mate there could tell you the like—we have often

confab’d about it,)

People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as

could be,

Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in

corners,

Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-

absent sons,

Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,

Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,

Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,

Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,

(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)

Show’d to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge,

Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

L. OF G.’S PURPORT

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their

formidable masses (even to expose them,)

But add, fuse, complete, extend—and celebrate the immortal and

the good.

Haughty this song, its words and scope,

To span vast realms of space and time,

Evolution—the cumulative—growths and generations.

Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued,

Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night

absorbing,

Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,

I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:

To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has

for years—

Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

THE UNEXPRESS’D

How dare one say it?

After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,

Vaunted Ionia‘s, India’s—Homer, Shakspere—the long, long

times’ thick dotted roads, areas,

The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars—Nature’s pulses

reap‘d,

All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,

All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,

All human lives, throats, wishes, brains—all experiences’ utterance;

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,

Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print—something

lacking,

(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

GRAND IS THE SEEN

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—grand are the sky

and stars,

Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,

And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending,

endowing all those,

Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing

the sea,

(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what

amount without thee?)

More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!

More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.

UNSEEN BUDS

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,

Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or

cubic inch,

Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,

Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;

Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them

waiting,

(On earth and in the sea—the universe—the stars there in the

heavens,)

Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,

And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY! ¹³⁰

Good-bye my Fancy!

Farewell dear mate, dear love!

I’m going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,

So Good-bye my Fancy.

Now for my last—let me look back a moment;

The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,

Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Long have we lived, joy‘d, caress’d together;

Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.

Yet let me not be too hasty,

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended

into one;

Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)

If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,

May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs,

(who knows?)

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now

finally,

Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.

PREFACE NOTE TO 2D ANNEX, CONCLUDING L. OF G.—1891124