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My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!

O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was born—the grains, plants, rivers

; Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands, or through

the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine; O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my

the graceful palmetto; I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your

O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabbed

paint myriads of heads, but paint no head with- out without its nimbus of gold-colored light, From my

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old, Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities

, Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, May filter in my daily songs.

My Canary Bird. MY CANARY BIRD.

Queries to My Seventieth Year. QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR.

After the dazzle of day is gone, Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; After the clangor

of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, Or breathe one breath of yours upon my

past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase—my

idle youth—old age at hand, My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, By any grand

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (

These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet, For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to

Far back, related on my mother's side, Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor

destination"—these the last words— when Jenny came, he sat there dead, Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my

, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet Gennaro's, I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my

My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (Now buried in an English grave—and this a memory-leaf for

Small the Theme of My Chant. From the 1867 edition L. of G. SMALL THE THEME OF MY CHANT.

Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest—namely, One's- Self One's-Self —a simple, separate person

My Days I sing, and the Lands—with interstice I knew of hap- less hapless War.

the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life, For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my

mother dear —you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,) For all my days—not those of peace alone—the

war's chosen ones, The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the foremost leaders, captains

them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my

current songs of beauty, peace, decorum, I cast a reminiscence—(likely 'twill offend you, I heard it in my

their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half- caught half-caught words: "Let me return again to my

Give me my old wild battle-life again!"

than old Voltaire's, yet greater, Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America, To my

and tide, Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting, Now here their sweetness through my

August now;) You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you over- stay'd overstay'd of time, Yet my

Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd, Invoking here and now I challenge for my

poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats, Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me, (For what is my

You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses, You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my

Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth, It shall yet march forth o'ermastering

Weave In, My Hardy Life. WEAVE IN, MY HARDY LIFE.

WEAVE in, weave in, my hardy life, Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come, Weave

have communed together, Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own; Was't charged against my

Then my realities; What else is so real as mine?

States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long, Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my

soldiers South or North, As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought, The war resumes, again to my

Now sound no note O trumpeters, Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses, With sabres

drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah my brave horsemen!

My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, With all the perils were yours.)

Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love, Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers

, are, Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my

SPLENDOR of ended day floating and filling me, Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past, Inflating my throat

Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, Natural life of me faithfully

To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh!

To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large! To be this incredible God I am!

How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around! How the clouds pass silently overhead!

AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother

My Legacy. MY LEGACY.

But I, my life surveying, closing, With nothing to show to devise from its idle years, Nor houses nor

lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends, Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after

you, And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love, I bind together and bequeath in this

earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my sons, lose not an atom, And you streams absorb them well,

, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable, And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my

, And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees, My dead absorb or South or North—my

darlings, give my immortal heroes, Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not

O my dead, an aroma sweet! Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.

AS they draw to a close, Of what underlies the precedent songs—of my aims in them, Of the seed I have

in them, Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them, (For them, for them have I lived, in them my

(Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry,) Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we

THESE carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see, For completion I dedicate to the Invisible

I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all, I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference

I have press'd through in my own right, I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung,

I have offer'd my style to every one, I have journey'd with confi- dent confident step; While my pleasure

My songs cease, I abandon them, From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you

Remember my words, I may again return, I love you, I depart from materials, I am as one disembodied,

My city's fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky

A carol closing sixty-nine—a résumé—a repetition, My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same, Of

ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry; Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled

entire—Of north, south, east and west, your items all; Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my

, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me, The burning fires down in my

or "To the Leaven'd Soil they Trod," Or "Captain! My Captain!"

thy Equal Brood," and many, many more unspecified, From fibre heart of mine—from throat and tongue—(My

. * *The two songs on this page are eked out during an afternoon, June, 1888, in my seventieth year,

Good-Bye My Fancy. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY.

GOOD-BYE * my fancy—(I had a word to say, But 'tis not quite the time—The best of any man's word or say

My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years, Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably

twined and merged in one—combining all, My single soul—aims, confirmations, failures, joys—Nor single

soul alone, I chant my nation's crucial stage, (America's, haply humanity's) —the trial great, the victory

common bulk, the general average horde, (the best no sooner than the worst)—And now I chant old age, (My

snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses winter- cool'd the same;) As here in careless trill, I and my

My 71st Year. MY 71ST YEAR.

AFTER surmounting three-score and ten, With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, My parents'

deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of '63 and '4, As some old

thee, Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: So let the wreath hang still awhile within my

—In my rambles and explorations I found a woody place near the creek, where for some reason the birds

Nor for myself—my own rebellious self in thee? Down, down, proud gorge!

One consideration rising out of the now dead soldier's example as it passes my mind, is worth taking

If the war had continued any long time these States, in my opinion, would have shown and proved the most

AH, whispering, something again, unseen, Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,

utterance to my heart beyond the rest—and this is of them,) So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy

soothing fingers on my face and hands, Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of

, now gone—haply from endless store, God-sent, (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my

Illinois, Ohio, From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas, (Even here in my

Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes, Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my

these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) Have lost my

"Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all, all—is immanent