第 100 节

shapes, the voice that chants this song.

Election Day, November, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, ’Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon’s white cones--nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes--nor Mississippi’s stream: --This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name--the still small voice vibrating--America’s choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) The stretch of North and South arous’d--sea-board and inland-- Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross: --Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!

With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloos’d hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest--no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet never gain’st, Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent, Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers, By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath, And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, And undertones of distant lion roar, (Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear--but now, rapport for once, A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) The first and last confession of the globe, Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms, The tale of cosmic elemental passion, Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

Death of General Grant

As one by one withdraw the lofty actors, From that great play on history’s stage eterne, That lurid, partial act of war and peace--of old and new contending, Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; All past--and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing, Victor’s and vanquish’d--Lincoln’s and Lee’s--now thou with them, Man of the mighty days--and equal to the days! Thou from the prairies!--tangled and many-vein’d and hard has been thy part, To admiration has it been enacted!

Red Jacket (From Aloft)

Upon this scene, this show, Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, (Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,) Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes, As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul, Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form, In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical smile curving its phantom lips, Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.

Washington’s Monument February, 1885

Ah, not this marble, dead and cold: Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling, comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire--not yours alone, America, Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot, Or frozen North, or sultry South--the African’s--the Arab’s in his tent, Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same--the heir legitimate, continued ever, The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line, Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--e’en in defeat defeated not, the same:) Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night, Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms, Now, or to come, or past--where patriot wills existed or exist, Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law, Stands or is rising thy true monument.

Of That Blithe Throat of Thine

Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank, I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird--let me too welcome chilling drifts, E’en the profoundest chill, as now--a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d, Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay--(cold, cold, O cold!) These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last; Not summer’s zones alone--not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone, But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus of years, These with gay heart I also sing.

Broadway

What hurrying human tides, or day or night! What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! What curious questioning glances--glints of love! Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet! Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming, mocking life! Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

To Get the Final Lilt of Songs

To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt-- to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

Old Salt Kossabone

Far back, related on my mother’s side, Old Salt Kossabone, I’ll tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor all his life--was nearly 90--lived with his married grandchild, Jenny; House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea;) The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, In his great ar