solely to you.
Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man,
(Is it night? are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms — decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me,
Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans
of my ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious, enough.
Enough O deed impromptu and secret,
Enough O gliding present — enough O summ’d-up past.
Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
I give it especially to you, do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras
ascending, while others doubtless await me,
An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts
awakening rays about me, So long!
Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY
Mannahatta
My city’s fit and noble name resumed,
Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
A rocky founded island — shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
going, hurrying sea waves.
Paumanok
Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,
steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle — mighty hulls
dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water — healthy air and soil!
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!
From Montauk Point
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps — that inbound urge and urge
of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.
To Those Who’ve Fail’d
To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent travelers — to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition — I’d rear
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest — To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
A carol closing sixty-nine — a resume — a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land — your rivers, prairies, States — you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire — Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself — the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed — the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith — the groups of loving friends.
The Bravest Soldiers
Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through
the fight;
But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.
A Font of Type
This latent mine — these unlaunch’d voices — passionate powers,
