feet,
For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to
     the last;
Not summer's zones alone — not chants of
     youth, or south's warm tides alone,
But held by sluggish floes, pack'd in the northern
     ice, the cumulus of years,
These with gay heart I also sing.

(1884) 1888-9

BROADWAY

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 sliding, mincing, shuffling
     feet!
Thou, like the parti-colored world itself —
     like infinite, teeming, mocking life!
Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

1888 1888-9

TO GET THE FINAL LILT OF SONGS

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
     entranceprice,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past
     experiences.

1888 1888-9

OLD SALT KOSSABONE

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
     mutters to himself — And now the close
     of all:
One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for
     long — cross-tides and much wrong
     going,
At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her
     whole luck veering,
And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness
     proudly entering, cleaving, as he watches,

``She's free — she's on her destination''
     — these the last words — when
     Jenny came, he sat there dead,
Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother's
     side, far back.

1888 1888-9

THE DEAD TENOR

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 passionate call,
     Ernani's, sweet Gennaro's,
I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants
     transmuting,
Freedom's and Love's and Faith's unloos'd cantabile,
(As perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation:)
From these, for these, with these, a hurried line,
     dead tenor,
A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave,
     the shovel'd earth,
To memory of thee.

1884 1888-9

CONTINUITIES

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,