The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame
     again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings
     and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law
     returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and
     corn.

1888 1888-9

YONNONDIO

(The sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. It is an
     Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.)

A SONG, a poem of itself — the word
     itself a dirge,
Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry
     night,
To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables
     calling up;
Yonnondio — I see, far in the west or
     north, a limitless ravine, with plains and
     mountains dark,
I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine- men,
     and warriors,
As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and
     are gone in the twilight,
(Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the
     falls!
No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the
     future:)
Yonnondio! Yonnondio! — unlimn'd they
     disappear;
To-day gives place, and fades — the cities,
     farms, factories fade;
A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne
     through the air for a moment,
Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

1887 1888-9

LIFE

EVER the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling
     soul of man;
(Have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh
     armies — and fresh again;)
Ever the grappled mystery of all earth's ages old
     or new;
Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping
     hands, the loud applause;
Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;
Struggling to-day the same — battling the same.

1888 1888-9

``GOING SOMEWHERE''

MY science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,
(Now buried in an English grave — and
     this a memory- leaf for her dear sake,)
Ended our talk — ``The sum, concluding
     all we know of old or modern learning,
     intuitions deep,
``Of all Geologies — Histories —
     of all Astronomy — of Evolution, Meta-
     physics all,
``Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding
     slowly, surely bettering,
``Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no
     halt, but it is duly over,)
``The world, the race, the soul — in space
     and time the universes,
``All bound as is befitting each — all surely
     going somewhere.''

1887 1888-9

SMALL THE THEME OF MY CHANT

SMALL the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest
     — namely, One's-Self — a
     simple, separate person. That, for the use of
     the New World, I sing,
Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I
     sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone,
     is worthy for the Muse; — I say
     the Form complete is worthier far. The Female
     equally with the Male, I sing.
Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak
     the word of the modern, the word En-Masse.
My Days I sing, and the Lands — with
     interstice I knew of hapless War.
(O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither
     to commence, I feel through every leaf the
     pressure of your hand, which I return.
And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and
     more than once, and link'd together let us go.)

1867 1888-9

TRUE CONQUERORS

OLD farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how
     crippled or bent,)
Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm
     and wreck,
Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds,
     defeats and scars;
Enough that they've survived at all — long life's
     unflinching ones!
Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged
     at all — in that alone,
True conquerors o'er all the rest.

1888 1888-9