noise of
     the world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for
     my own ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature
     your primal sanities!

These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement,
     and rack'd by the war-strife,)
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my
     heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your
     streets,
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give
     me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me
     forever faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my
     cries,
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.)

Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the
     woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields
     and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-
    month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets — give me these phantoms incessant
     and endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes — give me women — give me comrades
     and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day — let me hold new ones by the
     hand every day!
Give me such shows — give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching — give me the
     sound of the trumpets and drums!

(The soldiers in companies or regiments — some starting away,
     flush'd and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young,
     yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black
     ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me!
     the torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military
     wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions,
     pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating
     drums as now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets,
     (even the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

1865 1867

DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)