Sands at Seventy

MANNAHATTA

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.

1888 1888-9

PAUMANOK

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!

1888 1888-9

FROM MONTAUK POINT

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.

1888 1888-9

TO THOSE WHO'VE FAIL'D

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.

1888 1888-9

A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE

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 fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish'd faith — the groups of loving friends.

1888 1888-9

THE BRAVEST SOLDIERS

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.

1888 1888-9

A FONT OF TYPE

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.

1888 1888-9

AS I SIT WRITING HERE

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.

1888 1888-9