PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5

WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight,…

1 SINGING my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong, light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the Old World,…

IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen: There they bring him the three-year-olds…

OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice, Be not dishearten’d—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible—they shall yet make Columbia victorious.…

1 OUT of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, Whispering, I love you, before long I die, I have travel’d a long way, merely to…

1 OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the…

1 OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask, (All straighter, liker Masks rejected—this preferr’d,) This common curtain of the face, contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in…

OTHERS may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in art, or aught else, Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of…

1 OR, from that Sea of Time, Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells; (O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless! Yet will you…