This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best....
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 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;...
Among the men and women, the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am;...
With its cloud of skirmishers in advance, With now the sound of a single shot, snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley, The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on;...
Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning--I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?...
As Adam, early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower, refresh'd with sleep; Behold me where I pass--hear my voice--approach, Touch me--touch the palm of your hand to my Body as I pass;...
As if a phantom caress'd me, I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore; But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore--the one I loved, that caress'd me,...
AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace, (For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific Ideal! Against vast odds, having gloriously won,...
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.
Beginning my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact, consciousness--these forms--the power of motion, The least insect or animal--the senses--eyesight--love;...
I see before me now, a traveling army halting; Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer; Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;...
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;...
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,...
Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows;...
Great are the myths - I too delight in them; Great are Adam and Eve - I too look back and accept them; Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests....
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.
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?)...
In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded - of that indescribable look; Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide, I dream, I dream, I dream.