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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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FANCIES AT NAVESINK.
THE PILOT IN THE MIST.
Steaming the northern rapids—(an old St. Lawrence reminis-
cence,
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A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why, |
Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)* |
Again 'tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with day-
break,
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Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through
foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me,
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Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman |
Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand. |
HAD I THE CHOICE.
Had I the choice to tally greatest bards, |
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will, |
Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax, |
Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—Tenny-
son's fair ladies,
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Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect
rhyme, delight of singers;
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These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter, |
Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, |
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse, |
And leave its odor there. |
YOU TIDES WITH CEASELESS SWELL.
You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! |
You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's
spread,
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Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, |
What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what
Sirius'? what Capella's?
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What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what
boundless aggregate of all?
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What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to
all in you? what fluid, vast identity,
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Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as sailing in a ship? |
*Navesink—a sea-side mountain, lower entrance of New York Bay.
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LAST OF EBB, AND DAYLIGHT WANING.
Last of ebb, and daylight waning, |
Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt
incoming,
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With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies, |
Many a muffled confession—many a sob and whisper'd word, |
As of speakers far or hid. |
How they sweep down and out! how they mutter! |
Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish'd lost
designs,
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Love's unresponse—a chorus of age's complaints—hope's last
words,
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Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and
never again return.
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On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide! |
On for your time, ye furious debouché! |
AND YET NOT YOU ALONE.
And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb, |
Nor you, ye lost designs alone—nor failures, aspirations; |
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; |
Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again—duly the
hinges turning,
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Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, |
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself, |
The rhythmus of Birth eternal. |
PROUDLY THE FLOOD COMES IN.
Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, |
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, |
All throbs, dilates—the farms, woods, streets of cities—workmen
at work,
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Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers' pennants
of smoke—and under the forenoon sun,
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Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
inward bound,
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Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love. |
BY THAT LONG SCAN OF WAVES.
By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon
myself,
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In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect, |
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Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas—scenes ephemeral, |
The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and
the dead,
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Myself through every by-gone phase—my idle youth—old age at
hand,
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My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, |
By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, |
And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemble—some
wave, or part of wave,
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Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean. |
THEN LAST OF ALL.
Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, |
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning: |
Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, |
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song. |
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