he is risen again young and strong in
     another country,
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.

1861 1867

THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE

By the city dead-house by the gate,
As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead
     prostitute brought,
Her corpse they deposit unclaim'd, it lies on the damp brick
     pavement,
The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it
     alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice
     not,
Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor
     odors morbific impress me,
But the house alone — that wondrous house — that delicate
     fair house — that ruin!
That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings
    ever built!
Or white-domed capital with majestic figure surmounted, or
    all the old high-spired cathedrals,
That little house alone more than them all — poor, desperate
     house!
Fair, fearful wreck — tenement of a soul — itself a soul,
Unclaim'd, avoided house — take one breath from my
    tremulous lips,

Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,
Dead house of love — house of madness and sin, crumbled,
     crush'd,
House of life, erewhile talking and laughing — but ah, poor
     house, dead even then,
Months, years, an echoing, garnish'd house — but dead, dead,
    dead.

1867 1867

THIS COMPOST

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover
    the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to
     renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots,
     orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within
    you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am
    deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade
    through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person —
    yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,

The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of
    its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,m
The he- birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds
    sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow,
    the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green
    leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
    the door-yards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all
     those strata of sour dead.