Camden Annotation

My city's fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island -- shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves.

Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle -- mighty hulls dark-gliding in the distance. Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water -- healthy air and soil! Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!

I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak, Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,) The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps -- that inbound urge and urge of waves, Seeking the shores forever.

To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead, To calm, devoted engineers -- to over-ardent travelers -- to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition -- I'd rear a laurel-cover'd monument, High, high above the rest -- To all cut off before their time, Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, Quench'd by an early death.

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 Flag I love, Your aggregate retain'd entire -- Of north, south, east and west, your items all; Of me myself -- the jocund heart yet beating in my breast, The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed -- the strange inertia falling pall-like round me, The burning f [...]

Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; But the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

This latent mine -- these unlaunch'd voices -- passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

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.

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?

Approaching, nearing, curious, Thou dim, uncertain spectre -- bringest thou life or death? Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier? Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet? Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching?

[In Brooklyn, in an old vault, mark'd by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest revolutionary patriots from the British prison ships and prisons of the times of 1776-83, in and around New York, and from all over Long Island; originally buried -- many thousands of them -- in trenches in the Wallabout sands.] Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses, More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander, Those cart loads [...]

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass -- innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chair'd in the adamant of Time.

How sweet the silent backward tracings! The wanderings as in dreams -- the meditation of old times re- sumed -- their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

The appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game; The course of Time and nations -- Egypt, India, Greece and Rome; The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments, Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books, Garner'd for now and thee -- To think of it! The heirdom all converged in thee!

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.

To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer -- a pulse of thought, To memory of Him -- to birth of Him. Publish'd Feb. 12, 1888.

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms; Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green; The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning; The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun; The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

Not from successful love alone, Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war; But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air, As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree, Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon d [...]

THE PILOT IN THE MIST. Steaming the northern rapids -- (an old St. Lawrence reminis- cence, 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, Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me -- I press through foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me, Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand. HAD [...]

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 'Twould not be you, Niagara -- nor you, ye limitless prairies -- nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite -- nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser- loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon's white cones -- nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes -- nor Mississippi's stream: -- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name -- the still small voic [...]

With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk -- thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears -- a lack from all eternity i [...]

As one by one withdraw the lofty actors, From that great play on history's stage eterne, That lurid, partial act of war and peace -- of old and new con- tending, Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; All past -- and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing, Victor's and vanquish'd -- Lincoln's and Lee's -- now thou with them, Man of the mighty days -- and equal to the days! Thou from the prairies! -- tangled and many-vein'd and har [...]

[Impromptu on Buffalo City's monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.] Upon this scene, this show, Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth, (Nor in caprice alone -- some grains of deepest meaning,) Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds' blended shapes, As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul, Product of Nature's sun, stars, earth direct -- a towering human form, In hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a ha [...]

Ah, not this marble, dead and cold : Far from its base and shaft expanding -- the round zones circling, comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the world's, the continents' entire -- not yours alone, America, Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot, Or frozen North, or sultry South -- the African's -- the Arab's in his tent, Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the same -- the heir le [...]

[More than eighty-three degrees north -- about a good day's steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water -- Greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.] 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 un- nerv'd, Old age land-lock'd within its winter bay -- (c [...]

What hurrying human tides, or day or night! What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! What curious questioning glances -- glints of love! Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! Thou portal -- thou arena -- thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, façades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels -- thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sl [...]

To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets -- to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt -- to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

Far back, related on my mother's side, Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor all his life -- was nearly 90 -- lived with his married grandchild, Jenny; House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and stretch to open sea;) The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his regular custom, In his great arm chair by the window seated, (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,) Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutter [...]

As down the stage again, With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable, Back from the fading lessons of the past, I'd call, I'd tell and own, How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee! (So firm -- so liquid-soft -- again that tremulous, manly timbre! The perfect singing voice -- deepest of all to me the lesson -- trial and test of all:) How through those strains distill'd -- how the rapt ears, the soul of me, absorbing Fernando's heart, Manrico's p [...]

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form -- no object of 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 [...]

[The sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.] A song, a poem of itself -- the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up; Yonnondio -- I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, [...]

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (Have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh armies -- and fresh again;) Ever the grappled mystery of all earth's ages old or new; Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause; Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last; Struggling to-day the same -- battling the same.

My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (Now buried in an English grave -- and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,) Ended our talk -- "The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep, "Of all Geologies -- Histories -- of all Astronomy -- of Evolution, Metaphysics all, "Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering, "Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,) "The world, the race, the [...]

Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest -- namely, One's- Self -- a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physi- ognomy 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. Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak the word of the modern, the word En-Masse. My Days I sing, and the Lands -- with inter [...]

Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,) Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck, Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars; Enough that they've survived at all -- long life's unflinching ones! Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all -- in that alone, True conquerors o'er all the rest.

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

That coursing on, whate'er men's speculations, Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, Amid the bawling presentations new and old, The round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

Thanks in old age -- thanks ere I go, For health, 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 days of war the same, For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands, For shelter, wine and meat -- for sweet appreciation, (You distant, dim unknown -- for young or old -- countless, un- specif [...]

The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on, To ours to-day -- and we pass on the same.

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life [...]

Soon shall the winter's foil be here; Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt -- A little while, And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth -- a thousand forms shall rise From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves. Thine eyes, ears -- all thy best attributes -- all that takes cognizance of natural beauty, Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth, Dandelions, clover, the emerald gras [...]

While not the past forgetting, To-day, at least, contention sunk entire -- peace, brotherhood up- risen; For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands, Lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, North or South, (Nor for the past alone -- for meanings to the future,) Wreaths of roses and branches of palm. Publish'd May 30, 1888

Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity, Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum, I cast a reminiscence -- (likely 'twill offend you, I heard it in my boyhood;) -- More than a generation since, A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself, (Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritual- istic, Had fought in the ranks -- fought well -- had been all through the Revolutionary war,) Lay dying -- sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly [...]

Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power con- sign'd for once to colors; The light, the general air possess'd by them -- colors till now un- known, No limit, confine -- not the Western sky alone -- the high meri- dian -- North, South, all, Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting: He shipp'd as green-hand boy, and sail'd away, (took some sud- den, vehement notion;) Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round, While he the globe was circling round and round, -- and now returns: How changed the place -- all the old land-marks gone -- the parents dead; (Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good -- to settle -- has a well- fill'd purse -- no spot will do but this;) The [...]

[Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proofs enough of civilization's and France's progress, in his day.] A lesser proof than old Voltaire's, yet greater, Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America, To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow, Brought safely for a thousand miles o'er land and tide, Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting, Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding, [...]

The soft voluptuous opiate shades, The sun just gone, the eager light dispell'd -- (I too will soon be gone, dispell'd,) A haze -- nirwana -- rest and night -- oblivion.

You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs, And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row; You tokens diminute and lorn -- (not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom -- no grain of August now;) You pallid banner-staves -- you pennants valueless -- you over- stay'd of time, Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, The faithfulest -- hardiest -- last.

Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like eagles' talons,) But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some summer -- bursting forth, To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade -- to nourishing fruit, Apples and grapes -- the stalwart limbs of trees emerging -- the fresh, free, open air, And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.

To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia, Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow -- less for the Emperor, Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o'er many a salt sea mile, Mourning a good old man -- a faithful shepherd, patriot. Publish'd March 10, 1888.

As the Greek's signal flame, by antique records told, Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory, Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero, With rosy tinge reddening the land he'd served, So I aloft from Mannahatta's ship-fringed shore, Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore, An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done, After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and hawser'd tight, Lies rusting, mouldering.

Now precedent songs, farewell -- by every name farewell, (Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons, From ups and downs -- with intervals -- from elder years, mid-age, or youth,) "In Cabin'd Ships," or "Thee Old Cause" or "Poets to Come" Or "Paumanok," "Song of Myself," "Calamus," or "Adam," Or "Beat! Beat! Drums!" or "To the Leaven'd Soil they Trod," Or "Captain! My Captain!" "Kosmos," "Quicksand Years," or "Thoughts," "Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood," [...]

After a week of physical anguish, Unrest and pain, and feverish heat, Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on, Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.* * The two songs on this page are eked out during an afternoon, June, 1888, in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. Of course no reader and probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional and solemn action as these involve to me. I feel in them an end and close of all.

The touch of flame -- the illuminating fire -- the loftiest look at last, O'er city, passion, sea -- o'er prairie, mountain, wood -- the earth itself; The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight, Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences; The calmer sight -- the golden setting, clear and broad: So much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan, Bro't out by them alone -- so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before; The [...]

After the supper and talk -- after the day is done, As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging, Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating, (So hard for his hand to release those hands -- no more will they meet, No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young, A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,) Shunning, postponing severance -- seeking to ward off the last word ever so little, E'en at the exit-door turning -- charges superfl [...]

By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade - some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas-scenes ephemeral, The long 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 ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some [...]