Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet,
Days, places, indifferent–though various, the same,
Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged,
Death indifferent–Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very
long ago?
For all that, I may now be watching you here, this moment;
For the future, with determined will, I seek–the woman of the
future,
You, born years, centuries after me, I seek.
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,I mourn’d–and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,And thought of him I love.O powerful, western, fallen star!O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!O great star disappear’d!…
(For what is my life, or any man’s life, but a conflict with foes–the old, the incessant war?)You degradations–you tussle with passions and appetites;You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest ofall;)You toil of painful and choked articulations–you meannesses;You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest ofany;)You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you…
And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place.O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shallfollow,As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywherearound the globe.All waits for the right…
Of waters, forests, hills;Of the earth at large, whispering through medium of me;Of vista–Suppose some sight in arriere, through the formative chaos,presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on thejourney;(But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;)–Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has becomesupplied–And of what will…
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health, with glad notes ofday-break I hear,A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly over the tops of immensewaves,A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously under and through theuniverse,The triumphant tutti–the funeral wailings, with sweet flutes andviolins–all these I fill myself with;I hear not…
