growth, façades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living
long, to leave,
Eidólons everlasting.
Exaltè,
rapt, ecstatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
The
mighty earth-eidólon.
All
space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving
their longer, shorter
use,)
Fill'd with eidólons only.
The
noiseless myriads,
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
The separate countless free identities,
like eyesight,
The true realities, eidólons.
Not
this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the universes,
Purport and end, ever the permanent life
of life,
Eidólons, eidólons.
Beyond
thy lectures learn'd professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond
all
mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist
with his chemistry,
The entities of
entities, eidólons.
Unfixed
yet fix'd,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidólons,
eidólons, eidólons.
The
prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern,
to Democracy, interpret yet to
them,
God and eidólons.
And
thee my soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to
meet,
Thy mates, eidólons.
Thy
body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy body,
The only purport of the form thou art, the
real I myself,
An image, an eidólon.
Thy
very songs not in thy songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting,
rising at last and floating,
A round full-orb'd eidólon.
1876 1876
FOR HIM I SING
I raise the present on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,
To make himself by them the law unto himself.
1871 1871
WHEN I READ THE BOOK
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my
real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
1867 1871
BEGINNING MY STUDIES
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
1867 1871
| Previous page | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark | Next chapter/page |