Works

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields--or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:...

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,...

I need no assurances--I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul;...

As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,
A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.

I shall go forth,
I shall traverse The States awhile--but I cannot tell whither or how long;...

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling leaves, kick'd by my feet, (for 'twas autumn,)
I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier,...

A woman waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all,...

I see before me now, a traveling army halting;
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;...

Brother of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
A burial verse for thee.
...

A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course--their arms flash in the sun--Hark to the musical clank;...

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand tight to the throats of kings.
...

Fast-anchor'd, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,...

From pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant--singing the phallus,...

Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul - not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.

Great are the myths - I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve - I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests....

Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,
To utter nothingness?

How solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where I stand;
As the faces, the masks appear--as I glance at the faces, studying the masks;...

I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.

I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;...

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics - each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,...

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions;
But really I am neither for nor against institutions;
(What indeed have I in common with them? - Or what with the destruction of them?)...