How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!
Poets unnamed — artists greatest of any, with
     cherish'd lost designs,
Love's unresponse — a chorus of age's complaints
     — hope's last words,
Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless
     waste, and never again return.

On to oblivion then!
On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!
On for your time, ye furious debouché!

AND YET NOT YOU ALONE

AND yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
Nor you, ye lost designs alone — nor failures,
     aspirations;
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming;
Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again —
     duly the hinges turning,
Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

PROUDLY THE FLOOD COMES IN

PROUDLY the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
All throbs, dilates — the farms, woods, streets of cities
     — workmen at work,
Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing — steamers'
     pennants of smoke — and under the forenoon sun,
Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily
     the inward bound,
Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

BY THAT LONG SCAN OF WAVES

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 drop within God's scheme's ensemble
     — some wave, or part of wave,
Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.

THEN LAST OF ALL

THEN last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:
Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me
     the same,
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.

1885 1888-9

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884

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 voice vibrating
     — America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself
     the main, the quadrennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd — sea-
     board and — inland Texas to Maine —
     the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West — the
     paradox and conflict,
The countless snow- flakes falling — (a swordless
     conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern
     Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity — welcoming the darker
     odds, the dross:
— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify
     — while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

1884 1888-9

WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA!

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-