Watching the east, the autumn sky.Up through the darkness,While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;And nigh at hand, only a very little above,Swim the delicate brothers, the…
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room withyou,Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake isplaying within me.
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured withmuch applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look’d up in perfect silence…
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzaspiano;But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,carrying a rifle on your shoulder,With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands–with a knife inthe belt at your side,As I heard you shouting loud–your sonorous voice ringing across thecontinent;Your masculine voice, O year,…
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…
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the day- break.My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure…
I heard what was said of the universe,Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?Magnifying and applying come I,Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,Buying drafts of Osiris,…
(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-ironicalsmile curving its phantom lips,Like one of Ossian’s ghosts…
rendezvous with my poems;A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as I journey through The States–Why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? Why to advertise forthem?For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman;For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts ofthe universe.
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,Amorous, mature–all beautiful to me–all wondrous;My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, forreasons, most wondrous;Existing, I peer and penetrate still,Content with the present–content with the past,By…
