.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.
Mannahatta My city's fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves.
Paumanok Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle--mighty hulls dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water--healthy air and soil! Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine! From Montauk Point I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak, Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,) The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge of waves, Seeking the shores forever.
To Those Who've Fail'd To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead, To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I'd rear laurel-cover'd monument, High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time, Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, Quench'd by an early death.
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition, My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same, Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry; Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love, Your aggregate retain'd entire--Of north, south, east and west, your items all; Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast, The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia falling pall-like round me, The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct, The undiminish'd faith--the groups of loving friends.
The Bravest Soldiers Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; But the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.
A Font of Type This latent mine--these unlaunch'd voices--passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers slumbering.
As I Sit Writing Here As I sit writing here, sick and grown old, Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities, Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, May filter in my dally songs.
My Canary Bird Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books, Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?
But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble, Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon, Is it not just as great, O soul?
Queries to My Seventieth Year Approaching, nearing, curious, Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun?
Wilt stir the waters yet?
Or haply cut me short for good?
Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching?
The Wallabout Martyrs Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses, More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander, Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones, Once living men--once resolute courage, aspiration, strength, The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.
The First Dandelion Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass--innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.
America Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
Memories How sweet the silent backward tracings! The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed -- their loves, joys, persons, voyages.
To-Day and Thee The appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game; The course of Time and nations--Egypt, India, Greece and Rome; The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments, Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books, Garner'd for now and thee--To think of it! The heirdom all converged in thee! After the Dazzle of Day After the dazzle of day is gone, Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb.

12, 1809 To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer--a pulse of thought, To memory of Him--to birth of Him.
Out of May's Shows Selected Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms; Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green; The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning; The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun; The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.
Halcyon Days Not from successful love alone, Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war; But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air, As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree, Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon days! FANCIES AT NAVESINK [I] The Pilot in the Mist Steaming the northern rapids--( an old St.Lawrence reminiscence, A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why, Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;) Again 'tis just at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak, Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--I press through foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me, Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.
[II] Had I the Choice 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, Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson's fair ladies, Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme, delight of singers; These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter, Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse, And leave its odor there.
[III] You Tides with Ceaseless Swell You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us?
what Sirius'?
what Capella's?
What central heart--and you the pulse--vivifies all?
what boundless aggregate of all?
What subtle indirection and significance in you?
what clue to all in you?
what fluid, vast identity, Holding the universe with all its parts as one--as sailing in a ship?
[IV] Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning Last of ebb, and daylight waning, Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming, With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies, Many a muffled confession--many a sob and whisper'd word, As of speakers far or hid.
How they sweep down and out! how they mutter! Poets unnamed--artists greatest of any, with cherish'd lost designs, Love's unresponse--a chorus of age's complaints--hope's last words, Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and never again return.
On to oblivion then! On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide! On for your time, ye furious debouche! [V] And Yet Not You Alone And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb, Nor you, ye lost designs alone--nor failures, aspirations; I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again--duly the hinges turning, Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself, The rhythmus of Birth eternal.
[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, All throbs, dilates--the farms, woods, streets of cities--workmen at work, Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing--steamers' pennants of smoke--and under the forenoon sun, Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade--some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral, The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand, My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemble--some wave, or part of wave, Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.
[VIII] Then Last Of All Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning: Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.
Election Day, November, 1884 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor Mississippi's stream: -- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland-- Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling--( a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross: -- Foams and ferments the wine?
it serves to purify--while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea! With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest--no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st, Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent, Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers, By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, And undertones of distant lion roar, (Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear--but now, rapport for once, A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) The first and last confession of the globe, Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, The tale of cosmic elemental passion, Thou tellest to a kindred soul.
Death of General Grant As one by one withdraw the lofty actors, From that great play on history's stage eterne, That lurid, partial act of war and peace--of old and new contending, Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; All past--and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing, Victor's and vanquish'd--Lincoln's and Lee's--now thou with them, Man of the mighty days--and equal to the days! Thou from the prairies!--tangled and many-vein'd and hard has been thy part, To admiration has it been enacted! Red Jacket (From Aloft) Upon this scene, this show, Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, (Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,) Haply, aloft, (who knows ?) from distant sky-clouds' blended shapes, As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul, Product of Nature's sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form, In hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a half-ironical smile curving its phantom lips, Like one of Ossian's ghosts looks down.
Washington's Monument February, 1885 Ah, not this marble, dead and cold: Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling, comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the world's, the continents' entire--not yours alone, America, Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot, Or frozen North, or sultry South--the African's--the Arab's in his tent, Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new?
'tis but the same--the heir legitimate, continued ever, The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line, Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--e'en in defeat defeated not, the same:) Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night, Through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out, factories or farms, Now, or to come, or past--where patriot wills existed or exist, Wherever Freedom, pois'd by Toleration, sway'd by Law, Stands or is rising thy true monument.
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank, I'll mind the lesson, solitary bird--let me too welcome chilling drifts, E'en the profoundest chill, as now--a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv'd, Old age land-lock'd within its winter bay--( cold, cold, O cold!) These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last; Not summer's zones alone--not chants of youth, or south's warm tides alone, But held by sluggish floes, pack'd in the northern ice, the cumulus of years, These with gay heart I also sing.
Broadway What hurrying human tides, or day or night! What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! What curious questioning glances--glints of love! Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet! Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming, mocking life! Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson! To Get the Final Lilt of Songs To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt-- to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.
Old Salt Kossabone Far back, related on my mother's side, Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor all his life--was nearly 90--lived with his married grandchild, Jenny; House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea;) The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, In his great arm chair by the window seated, (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,) Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself-- And now the close of all: One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long--cross-tides and much wrong going, At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering, And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering, cleaving, as he watches, "She's free--she's on her destination"-- these the last words--when Jenny came, he sat there dead, Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother's side, far back.
The Dead Tenor As down the stage again, With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable, Back from the fading lessons of the past, I'd call, I'd tell and own, How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee! (So firm--so liquid-soft--again that tremulous, manly timbre! The perfect singing voice--deepest of all to me the lesson--trial and test of all:) How through those strains distill'd--how the rapt ears, the soul of me, absorbing Fernando's heart, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet Gennaro's, I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting, Freedom's and Love's and Faith's unloos'd cantabile, (As perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation:) From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor, A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel'd earth, To memory of thee.
Continuities Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires, The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
Yonnondio A song, a poem of itself--the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up; Yonnondio--I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight, (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls! No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:) Yonnondio! Yonnondio!--unlimn'd they disappear; To-day gives place, and fades--the cities, farms, factories fade; A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment, Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.
Life Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (Have former armies fail'd?
then we send fresh armies--and fresh again;) Ever the grappled mystery of all earth's ages old or new; Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause; Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last; Struggling to-day the same--battling the same.
"Going Somewhere" My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (Now buried in an English grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,) Ended our talk--"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep, "Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics all, "Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering, "Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,) "The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes, "All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere." Small the Theme of My Chant Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest--namely, One's-Self-- a simple, separate person.

That, for the use of the New World, I sing.
Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing.

Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;--I say the Form complete is worthier far.