deck coldly giving his orders
     through a countenance white as a sheet,
Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and
     carefully curl'd whiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and
     below,
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of
     flesh upon the masts and spars,
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe
     of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong
     scent,
A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields
     by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,

The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and
     long, dull, tapering groan,
These so, these irretrievable.

You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
In at the conquer'd doors they crowd! I am possess'd!
Embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering,
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain,
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and
     keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd
     to him and walk by his side,
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with
     sweat on my twitching lips.)

Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am
     tried and sentenced.

Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the
     last gasp,
My face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me
     people retreat.

Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in
     them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers,
     dreams, gaping,
I discover myself on the verse of a usual mistake.

That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
     bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion
     and bloody crowning!

I remember now,
I resume the overstaid fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or
     to any graves,
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an
     average unending procession,
Inland and sea- coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of
     years.

Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he Kanadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them,
     stay with them.