Works

Earth, round, rolling, compact--suns, moons, animals--all these are words to be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances--beings, premonitions, lispings of the future,
Behold! these are vast words to be said.
...

A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course--their arms flash in the sun--Hark to the musical clank;...

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,...

City of orgies, walks and joys!
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you--not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles, repay me;...

City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bow'd steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here;...

Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother--here's a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn;...

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!...

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,...

He is wisest who has the most caution,
He only wins who goes far enough.

Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that will produce it and continue it.

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)...

Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night,
The sad voice of Death--the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain,
This sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,...

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.


Lo! the moon ascending!...

Aroused and angry,
I thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war;
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd, and I resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead....

Earth! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth;...

I met a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he,...

Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,...

Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human,
With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet?
Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

...

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand tight to the throats of kings.
...

Who has gone farthest? For lo! have not I gone farther?
And who has been just? For I would be the most just person of the earth;
And who most cautious? For I would be more cautious;...

Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road--lo! such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
The spiritual, prescient face--the always welcome, common, benevolent face,...