Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Outside fair costume--within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye--no more a sonorous voice or springy step;...
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!...
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown; A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;...
AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, The confession I made I resume--what I said to you in the open air I resume: I know I am restless, and make others so;...
Brother of all, with generous hand, Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul, A thought to launch in memory of thee, A burial verse for thee. ...
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,...
Had I the choice to tally greatest bards, To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will, Homer with all his wars and warriors, Hector, Achilles, Ajax,...
Hast never come to thee an hour, A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours, To utter nothingness?
What ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning? Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect pilot needs? Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,...
Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting: Here I shade and hide my thoughts - I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.
Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted, Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented spot, seating myself, leaning my face in my hands;...
How solemn, as one by one, As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where I stand; As the faces, the masks appear--as I glance at the faces, studying the masks;...
Hush'd be the camps to-day; And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons; And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate, Our dear commander's death.
I am he that aches with amorous love; Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear; Those of mechanics - each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong; The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,...
I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church; Winds of autumn! - as I walk'd the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch'd sighs, up above, so mournful;...
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions; But really I am neither for nor against institutions; (What indeed have I in common with them? - Or what with the destruction of them?)...