alarmed, uncertain,
This sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,
Come tell me where I am speeding–tell me my destination.
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold–the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,
your mute inquiry,
Whither I go from the bed I now recline on, come tell me;
Old age, alarmed, uncertain–A young woman’s voice appealing to me,
for comfort,
A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?
One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair,He has the simple magnificence of health and strength,His face strikes as with flashes of lightning whoever it turnstoward.Three old men slowly pass, followed by three others, and they bythree others,They are beautiful–the one in the middle of each group holds hiscompanions by the hand,As…
From the clasp of the knitted locks–from the keep of the well-closeddoors,Let me be wafted.Let me glide noiselessly forth;With the key of softness unlock the locks–with a whisper,Set ope the doors, O Soul!Tenderly! be not impatient!(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!Strong is your hold, O love.) 10
What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,I am afoot with my vision.By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen,Along the ruts…
Lo! me, ever open and helpless, bereft of my strength!Utterly abject, grovelling on the ground before them.
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,From all the standards hitherto publish’d–from the pleasures,profits, eruditions, conformities,Which too long I was offering to feed my soul;Clear to me, now, standards not yet publish’d–clear to me that mySoul,That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices most incomrades;Here, by myself, away from the clank of…
O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever!O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not–I am content;)O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and lookat, where I cast them!To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind!
