Works

One hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
...

One song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee - the Future.

I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality;...

One's-self I sing - a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.

Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;...

One sweeps by, attended by an immense train,
All emblematic of peace - not a soldier or menial among them.

One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair,...

An old man's thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!
...

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,...

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining--I think a thought of the clef of
the universes, and of the future.
...

Or, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the wind - a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!...

O star of France!
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale - a mastless hulk;...

O sun of real peace! O hastening light!
O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height - and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend!...

O tan-faced prairie-boy!
Before you came to camp, came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food - till at last, among the recruits,...

Others may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in art, or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river - also the western prairie-scent,...

Out from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask,
(All straighter, liker Masks rejected - this preferr'd,)
This common curtain of the face, contain'd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each,...

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,...

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,...

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten'd - Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible - they shall yet make Columbia victorious.
...

O you whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you;
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,...

Singing my days,
Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong, light works of engineers,
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)...

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,...

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.)