Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait
     with perfect trust, no matter how long,
And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath'd
     cause, as for all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,
O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon
     be drowning all that would interrupt them,
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.

1860
1871

MYSELF AND MINE

MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat, to make good aim with a gun, to
     sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common
     people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer,
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome
     them also,)
But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.

Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of
     plenteous supreme Gods, that the States may realize
     them walking and talking.

Let me have my own way,
Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of
     the laws,
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up
     agitation and conflict,
I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that
     was thought most worthy.

(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your
     life?
Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter
     all your life?
And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages,
     reminiscences,
Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly
     a single word?)

Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,
I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and
     modern continually.

I give nothing as duties,
What others give as duties I give as living impulses,
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I
     arouse unanswerable questions,
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
What about these likes of myself that draw me so close
     by tender directions and indirections?

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends,
     but listen to my enemies, as I myself do,
I charge you forever reject those who would expound
     me, for I cannot expound myself,
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out
     of me,
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

After me, vista!
O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early
     riser, a steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.
I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water,
     earth,
I perceive I have no time to lose.

1860 1881

YEAR OF METEORS

YEAR of meteors! brooding year!
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds
     and signs,
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair,
     mounted the scaffold in Virginia,
(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I
     watch'd,