One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En. Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy
for the Muse, I say the Form complete is
worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
But Susan is a stranger yet -
The ones who cite her most
Have never scaled her Haunted House
Nor compromise her Ghost -
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her know her less
The nearer her they get.
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form-no object the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space-ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold-the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her know her less
The nearer her they get -
How adequate the Human Heart
To it's emergency -
Intrenchments stimulate a friend
And stem an enemy.
What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far -
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar
Whose limit none have ever seen,
But just his lid of glass -
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!
The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.
Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands next the sea
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray -
But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.
To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.
Perhaps they do not go so far
As we who stay, suppose -
Perhaps come closer, for the lapse
Of their corporeal clothes -
It may be, know so certainly
How short we have to fear
That Comprehension antedates
And estimates us there.
I have no Life but this -
To lead it here -
Nor any Death - but lest
Dispelled from there -
Nor tie to Earths to come -
Nor Action new -
Except through this Extent -
The Realm of you.
It sounded as if the streets were running
And then - the streets stood still -
Eclipse - was all we could see at the Window
And Awe - was all we could feel.
By and by - the boldest stole out of his Covert
To see if Time was there -
Nature was in an Opal Apron -
Mixing fresher Air.
She laid her docile Crescent down
And this confiding Stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that she is gone.
So constant to it's Stolid trust
The Shaft that never knew -
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before it's Emblem flew.
After all Birds have been investigated
And laid aside
Nature imparts the little Blue Bird -
Assured
Her conscientious voice
Will soar unmoved
Above ostensible vicissitude -
First at the March
Competing with the Wind -
Her zealous Note
Delights it to ascend -
Last at the Scene
When Summer swerves away -
Fortitude - flanked with Melody.