Over the western sea, hither from Niphon come, Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys, Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, Ride to-day through Manhattan.
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.
Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats! Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me! (For what is my life, or any man's life, but a conflict with foes--the old, the incessant war?)...
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;...
A noiseless, patient spider, I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;...
Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-- they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water,...
A promise to California, Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon: Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust American love;...
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 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. ...
AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,...
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 ponder'd in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me, with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands,...
As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing, Or the sower sowing in the fields--or the harvester harvesting, I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:...
Bathed in war's perfume--delicate flag! (Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,) O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman!...
By broad Potomac's shore--again, old tongue! (Still uttering--still ejaculating--canst never cease this babble?) Again, old heart so gay--again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning;...
From Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,...
From pent-up, aching rivers; From that of myself, without which I were nothing; From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men; From my own voice resonant--singing the phallus,...
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;...
In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publish'd - from the pleasures, profits, eruditions, conformities,...
In the new garden, in all the parts, In cities now, modern, I wander, Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet, Days, places, indifferent - though various, the same,...