Ah more, infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais'd his warning cry, Is it this pile of
    brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you
    call the church?
Why this is not the church at all — the church is living, ever
    living souls.)

And you America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.

1874 1881

WANDERING AT MORN

Wandering at morn,
Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my
    thoughts,
Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird
    divine!
Thee coil'd in evil times my country, with craft and black
    dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,
This common marvel I beheld — the parent thrush I watch'd
    feeding its young,
The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,
Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.

There ponder'd, felt I,
If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual
    songs be turn'd,
If vermin so transposed, so used and bless'd may be,
Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;
Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?
From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,
Destin'd to fill the world.

1873 1881

ITALIAN MUSIC IN DAKOTA

(The Seventeenth — the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.)

Through the soft evening air enwinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related
    here,
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera house,
Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,
And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)
Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,
Music, Italian music in Dakota.

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,
Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,

(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
Listens well pleas'd.

1881 1881

WITH ALL THY GIFTS

With all thy gifts America,
Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee — with these and
    like of these vouchsafed to thee,
What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem
    never solving,)
The gift of perfect women fit for thee — what if that gift of
    gifts thou lackest?
The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion,
    fit for thee?
The mothers fit for thee?

1876 1881

MY PICTURE-GALLERY

In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd
    house,
It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;
Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all
    memories!
Here the tableaus