box,
Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
Now and then mark'd faces of sorrow or joy,
(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
Show'd to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge,
Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

1891 1891-2

L. OF G.'S PURPORT

NTO to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their
     formidable masses (even to expose them,)
But add, fuse, complete, extend — and celebrate the immortal
     and the good.

Haughty this song, its words and scope,
To span vast realms of space and time,
Evolution — the cumulative — growths and generations.

Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued,
Wandering, peering, dallying with all — war, peace, day and
     night absorbing,
Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,
I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:
To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and
     has for years —
Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

1891 1891-2

THE UNEXPRESS'D

HOW dare one say it?
After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
Vaunted Ionia's, India's — Homer, Shakspere — the long, long
     times, thick dotted roads, areas,
The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars — Nature's
     pulses reap'd,
All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,
All ages' plummets dropt to their utmost depths,
All human lives, throats, wishes, brains — all experiences'
     utterance;
After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all
     lands,
Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print —
     something lacking,
(Who knows? the best yet unexpress'd and lacking.)

1891 1891-2

GRAND IS THE SEEN

GRAND is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and
     stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing
     all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing
     the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of
     what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far — more lasting thou than they.

1891 1891-2

UNSEEN BUDS

UNSEEN buds, infinite, hidden well,
Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square
     or cubic inch,
Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,
Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;
Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,
(On earth and in the sea — the universe — the stars there in the
     heavens,)
Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,
And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

1891 1891-2

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY!

GOOD-BYE my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I'm going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy.

Now for my last — let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together;
Delightful! — now separation — Good-bye my Fancy.