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.

(1883) 1888-9

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!

1885 1888-9

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.

(1884) 1888-9

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.

(1885?) 1888-9

OF THAT BLITHE THROAT OF THINE

(More than eighty-three degrees north — about a good day's steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water — Greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.)

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