Cluster: CHILDREN OF ADAM
One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
a determin’d man.
O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
untied and illumin’d!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.
O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.
Cluster: SEA-DRIFT
Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew’d on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended’st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world’s floating vast.)
Far, far at sea,
After the night’s fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.
Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl’st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,
At dusk that lookist on Senegal, at morn America,
That sport’st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experiences, had’st thou my soul,
What joys! what joys were thine!
Cluster: BY THE ROADSIDE
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.
Cluster: DRUM-TAPS
From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all,
To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and
Arkansas to sing theirs,
To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs,
To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;
To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,)
The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,
And then the song of each member of these States.
Let that which stood in front go behind,
Let that which was behind advance to the front,
Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions,
Let the old propositions be postponed,
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself,
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
1 Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? Come duly to the divine power to speak words? For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness, After treading ground and breasting river and lake, After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom, crimes, After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing obstructions, After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, woman, the divine power to speak words; Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all—none refuse, all attend, Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks, They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the mouth of that man or that woman.
2 O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe.
All waits for the right voices; Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? where is the develop’d soul? For I see every word utter’d thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms.
I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering forever ready in all words.
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them, He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard, The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides—how soon this tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color’d, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—see you! the bright hides, See, the two with stars on their foreheads—see, the round bodies and broad backs, How straight and square they stand on their legs—what fine sagacious eyes! How straight they watch their tamer—they wish him near them—how they turn to look after him! What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them; Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics, poems, depart—all else departs,) I confess I envy only his fascination—my silent, illiterate friend, Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms, In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine! Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee, This common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d feeding its young, The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic, Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.
There ponder’d, felt I, If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn’d, If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be, Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destin’d to fill the world.
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
[“The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.”]
Through the soft evening air enwinding all, Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes, Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera house, Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, Sonnambula’s innocent love, trios with Norma’s anguish, And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;) Ray’d in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, Music, Italian music in Dakota.
While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm, Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, Acknowledging rapport however far remov’d, (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) Listens well pleas’d.
1 Proud music of the storm, Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, Strong hum of forest tree-tops—wind of the mountains, Personified dim shapes—you hidden orchestras, You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert, Blending with Nature’s rhythmus all the tongues of nations; You chords left as by vast composers—you choruses, You formless, free, religious dances—you from the Orient, You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts, You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry, Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls, Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless, Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you seiz’d me?
2 Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire, Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend, Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber, For thee they sing and dance O soul.
A festival song, The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march, With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill’d to the brim with love, The red-flush’d cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of friendly faces young and old, To flutes’ clear notes and sounding harps’ cantabile.
Now loud approaching drums, Victoria! seest thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying? the rout of the baffled? Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?
(Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony, The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken’d ruins, the embers of cities, The dirge and desolation of mankind.)
Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me, I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals, I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love, I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.
Now the great organ sounds, Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth, On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend, All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know, Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and play, the clouds of heaven above,) The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not, Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest, And with it every instrument in multitudes, The players playing, all the world’s musicians, The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration, All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals, The measureless sweet vocalists of ages, And for their solvent setting earth’s own diapason, Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves, A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer, As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso, The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done, The journey done, the journeyman come home, And man and art with Nature fused again.
Tutti! for earth and heaven; (The Almighty leader now for once has signal’d with his wand.)
The manly strophe of the husbands of the world, And all the wives responding.
The tongues of violins, (I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself, This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)
3 Ah from a little child, Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music, My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn, (The voice, O tender voices, memory’s loving voices, Last miracle of all, O dearest mother’s, sister’s, voices;) The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn, The measur’d sea-surf beating on the sand, The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream, The wild-fowl’s notes at night as flying low migrating north or south, The psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting, The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song, The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn.
All songs of current lands come sounding round me, The German airs of friendship, wine and love, Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles, Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, and o’er the rest, Italia’s peerless compositions.
Across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion, Stalks Norma brandishing the dagger in her hand.
I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam, Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel’d.
I see where Ernani walking the bridal garden, Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand, Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn.
To crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven, The clear electric base and baritone of the world, The trombone duo, Libertad forever! From Spanish chestnut trees’ dense shade, By old and heavy convent walls a wailing song, Song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench’d in despair, Song of the dying swan, Fernando’s heart is breaking.
Awaking from her woes at last retriev’d Amina sings, Copious as stars and glad as morning light the torrents of her joy.
(The teeming lady comes, The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother, Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.)
4 I hear those odes, symphonies, operas, I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous’d and angry people, I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert, Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan.
I hear the dance-music of all nations, The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss, The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets.
I see religious dances old and new, I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre, I see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the martial clang of cymbals, I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers’d with frantic shouts, as they spin around turning always towards Mecca, I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs, Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing, I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies, I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet.
I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers wounding each other, I see the Roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets throwing and catching their weapons, As they fall on their knees and rise again.
I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling, I see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor word, But silent, strange, devout, rais’d, glowing heads, ecstatic faces.
I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings, The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen, The sacred imperial hymns of China, To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,) Or to Hindu flutes and the fretting twang of the vina, A band of bayaderes.
5 Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me, To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of voices, Luther’s strong hymn Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott, Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa, Or floating in some high cathedral dim with gorgeous color’d windows, The passionate Agnus Dei or Gloria in Excelsis.
Composers! mighty maestros! And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi! To you a new bard caroling in the West, Obeisant sends his love.
(Such led to thee O soul, All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee, But now it seems to me sound leads o’er all the rest.)
I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul’s cathedral, Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies, oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn, The Creation in billows of godhood laves me.
Give me to hold all sounds, (I madly struggling cry,) Fill me with all the voices of the universe, Endow me with their throbbings, Nature’s also, The tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and dances, Utter, pour in, for I would take them all!
6 Then I woke softly, And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream, And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury, And all the songs of sopranos and tenors, And those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor, And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs, And all the artless plaints of love and grief and death, I said to my silent curious soul out of the bed of the slumber-chamber, Come, for I have found the clew I sought so long, Let us go forth refresh’d amid the day, Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real, Nourish’d henceforth by our celestial dream.
And I said, moreover, Haply what thou hast heard O soul was not the sound of winds, Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk’s flapping wings nor harsh scream, Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy, Nor German organ majestic, nor vast concourse of voices, nor layers of harmonies, Nor strophes of husbands and wives, nor sound of marching soldiers, Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps, But to a new rhythmus fitted for thee, Poems bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night air, uncaught, unwritten, Which let us go forth in the bold day and write.
Cluster: WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear, But now the chorus I hear and am elated, A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear, A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves, A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe, The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all these I fill myself with, I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings, I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion; I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think begin to know them.
Cluster: SANDS AT SEVENTY
Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books, Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations? But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble, Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon, Is it not just as great, O soul?
Cluster: SANDS AT SEVENTY
Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,
I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling drifts,
E’en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d,
Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,
For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;
Not summer’s zones alone—not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone,
But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus
of years,
These with gay heart I also sing.