1 SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its…

1 WHO are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human, With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet? Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors…

1 ELEMENTAL drifts! How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me! As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I…

I MET a Seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidolons. Put in thy chants, said he, No…

EARTH! my likeness! Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to…

1 FIRST, O songs, for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum, pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue,…

1 AN old man bending, I come, among new faces, Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children, Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that…

1 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. 2 Lo! the moon ascending! Up…

1 DESPAIRING cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, This sea I am quickly to…

DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life! Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining! Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! How I heard…