Works

To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer, a pulse of thought,
To memory of Him, to birth of Him.

A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms'a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;...

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;
And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

A leaf for hand in hand!
You natural persons old and young!
You on the Mississippi, and on all the branches and bayous of the
Mississippi!
You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs!...

America always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!...

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.
...

A woman waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all,...

Behold this swarthy face--these gray eyes,
This beard--the white wool, unclipt upon my neck,
My brown hands, and the silent manner of me, without charm;...

By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;--but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,...

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;...

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!...

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!...

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,...

Facing west, from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,...

Fast-anchor'd, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,...

For him I sing,
I raise the Present on the Past,
(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:)
With time and space I him dilate--and fuse the immortal laws,...

A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.

I walk'd the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,...

From far Dakota's ca'ons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,...

From my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath,
Scatter'd and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West,
Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois--through Colorado, California air,...