Works

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

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!...

As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,...

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;...

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;...

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,...

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,...

Full of life, now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you.
...

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;...

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 saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,...

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;...

I was looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants - and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)...

Laws for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders - for fresh broods of teachers, and perfect literats for America,
For noble savans, and coming musicians.
...

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;...

There are who teach only the sweet lessons of peace and safety;
But I teach lessons of war and death to those I love,
That they readily meet invasions, when they come.

Locations and times - what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors - what is it in me that corresponds with them?

O magnet-south! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!...

Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me - O if I could but obtain knowledge!...