The Sunlight On The Garden The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold, When all is told We cannot beg for pardon. Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances. The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden. Poem By Louis MacNeice

The Fish I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen —the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly— I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. —It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip —if you could call it a lip— grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels—until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. Poem By Elizabeth Bishop

Dust Of Snow The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. Poem By Robert Frost

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with fearful trill of the things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing The caged bird sings Poem By Maya Angelou

Nature, That Washed Her Hands In Milk Nature, that washed her hands in milk, And had forgot to dry them, Instead of earth took snow and silk, At love's request to try them, If she a mistress could compose To please love’s fancy out of those. Her eyes he would should be of light, A violet breath, and lips of jelly; Her hair not black, nor overbright, And of the softest down her belly; As for her inside he’d have it Only of wantonness and wit. At love's entreaty such a one Nature made, but with her beauty She hath framed a heart of stone; So as love, by ill destiny, Must die for her whom nature gave him, Because her darling would not save him. But time (which nature doth despise, And rudely gives her love the lie, Makes hope a fool, and sorrow wise) His hands do neither wash nor dry; But being made of steel and rust, Turns snow and silk and milk to dust. The light, the belly, lips, and breath, He dims, discolors, and destroys; With those he feeds but fills not death, Which sometimes were the food of joys. Yea, time doth dull each lively wit, And dries all wantonness with it. Oh, cruel time! which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days. Poem By Sir Walter Raleigh

How Happy Is The Little Stone    How happy is the little stone    That rambles in the road alone,    And does n’t care about careers,    And exigencies never fears;    Whose coat of elemental brown        A passing universe put on;    And independent as the sun,    Associates or glows alone,    Fulfilling absolute decree    In casual simplicity. Poem By Emily Dickinson

Snow-Flakes (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Second) Out of the bosom of the Air     Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare,     Over the harvest-fields forsaken,           Silent, and soft, and slow           Descends the snow. Even as our cloudy fancies take     Suddenly shape in some divine expression, Even as the troubled heart doth make     In the white countenance confession           The troubled sky reveals           The grief it feels. This is the poem of the air,     Slowly in silent syllables recorded; This is the secret of despair,     Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,           Now whispered and revealed           To wood and field. Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Aftermath  (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Third) When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown,   And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow   And gather in the aftermath. Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours;   Not the upland clover bloom; But the rowen mixed with weeds, Tangled tufts from marsh and meads, Where the poppy drops its seeds   In the silence and the gloom. Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Rainy Day The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains,and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains,and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Sound Of The Sea The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,     And round the pebbly beaches far and wide     I heard the first wave of the rising tide     Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep; A voice out of the silence of the deep,     A sound mysteriously multiplied     As of a cataract from the mountain's side,     Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep. So comes to us at times, from the unknown     And inaccessible solitudes of being,     The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul; And inspirations, that we deem our own,     Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing     Of things beyond our reason or control. Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Moon She comes! again she comes, the bright-eyed moon! Under a ragged cloud I found her out, Clasping her own dark orb like hope in doubt! That ragged cloud hath waited her since noon, And he hath found and he will hide her soon! Come, all ye little winds that sit without, And blow the shining leaves her edge about, And hold her fast—ye have a pleasant tune! She will forget us in her walks at night Among the other worlds that are so fair! She will forget to look on our despair! She will forget to be so young and bright! Nay, gentle moon, thou hast the keys of light— I saw them hanging by thy girdle there!   Poem By George MacDonald

Come To The Greenwood Tree Come to the greenwood tree,    Come where the dark woods be,    Dearest, O come with me! Let us rove—O my love—O my love!    Come—'tis the moonlight hour,    Dew is on leaf and flower,    Come to the linden bower,— Let us rove—O my love—O my love! Dark is the wood, and wide Dangers, they say, betide; But, at my Albert's side, Nought I fear, O my love—O my love! Welcome the greenwood tree, Welcome the forest free, Dearest, with thee, with thee, Nought I fear, O my love—O my love! Poem By William Makepeace Thackeray

A Patch of Snow There's a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I've forgotten -- If I ever read it. Poem by Robert Frost

Blue-Butterfly Day It is a blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry. But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire. Poem by Robert Frost

The Mountain The mountain held the town as in a shadow I saw so much before I slept there once: I noticed that I missed stars in the west, Where its black body cut into the sky. Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. And yet between the town and it I found, When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. The river at the time was fallen away, And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; But the signs showed what it had done in spring; Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. And there I met a man who moved so slow With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. "What town is this?" I asked. "This? Lunenburg." Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, But only felt at night its shadowy presence. "Where is your village? Very far from here?" "There is no village—only scattered farms. We were but sixty voters last election. We can't in nature grow to many more: That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad. The mountain stood there to be pointed at. Pasture ran up the side a little way, And then there was a wall of trees with trunks: After that only tops of trees, and cliffs Imperfectly concealed among the leaves. A dry ravine emerged from under boughs Into the pasture. "That looks like a path. Is that the way to reach the top from here?— Not for this morning, but some other time: I must be getting back to breakfast now." "I don't advise your trying from this side. There is no proper path, but those that have Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's. That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place: They logged it there last winter some way up. I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way." "You've never climbed it?" "I've been on the sides Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook That starts up on it somewhere—I've heard say Right on the top, tip-top—a curious thing. But what would interest you about the brook, It's always cold in summer, warm in winter. One of the great sights going is to see It steam in winter like an ox's breath, Until the bushes all along its banks Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles— You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!" "There ought to be a view around the world From such a mountain—if it isn't wooded Clear to the top." I saw through leafy screens Great granite terraces in sun and shadow, Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up— With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet; Or turn and sit on and look out and down, With little ferns in crevices at his elbow. "As to that I can't say. But there's the spring, Right on the summit, almost like a fountain. That ought to be worth seeing." "If it's there. You never saw it?" "I guess there's no doubt About its being there. I never saw it. It may not be right on the very top: It wouldn't have to be a long way down To have some head of water from above, And a good distance down might not be noticed By anyone who'd come a long way up. One time I asked a fellow climbing it To look and tell me later how it was." "What did he say?" "He said there was a lake Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top." "But a lake's different. What about the spring?" "He never got up high enough to see. That's why I don't advise your trying this side. He tried this side. I've always meant to go And look myself, but you know how it is: It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain You've worked around the foot of all your life. What would I do? Go in my overalls, With a big stick, the same as when the cows Haven't come down to the bars at milking time? Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? 'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it." "I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to— Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?" "We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right." "Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?" "You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg, But it's as much as ever you can do, The boundary lines keep in so close to it. Hor is the township, and the township's Hor— And a few houses sprinkled round the foot, Like boulders broken off the upper cliff, Rolled out a little farther than the rest." "Warm in December, cold in June, you say?" "I don't suppose the water's changed at all. You and I know enough to know it's warm Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. But all the fun's in how you say a thing." "You've lived here all your life?" "Ever since Hor Was no bigger than a——" What, I did not hear. He drew the oxen toward him with light touches Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, Gave them their marching orders and was moving. Poem by Robert Frost

Storm Fear When the wind works against us in the dark, And pelts with snow The lowest chamber window on the east, And whispers with a sort of stifled bark, The beast, 'Come out! Come out!'— It costs no inward struggle not to go, Ah, no! I count our strength, Two and a child, Those of us not asleep subdued to mark How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,— How drifts are piled, Dooryard and road ungraded, Till even the comforting barn grows far away And my heart owns a doubt Whether 'tis in us to arise with day And save ourselves unaided. Poem by Robert Frost

Wind And Window Flower Lovers, forget your love,     And list to the love of these,     She a window flower,     And he a winter breeze.     When the frosty window veil     Was melted down at noon,     And the cagèd yellow bird     Hung over her in tune,     He marked her through the pane,     He could not help but mark,     And only passed her by,     To come again at dark.     He was a winter wind,     Concerned with ice and snow,     Dead weeds and unmated birds,     And little of love could know.     But he sighed upon the sill,     He gave the sash a shake,     As witness all within     Who lay that night awake.     Perchance he half prevailed     To win her for the flight     From the firelit looking-glass     And warm stove-window light.     But the flower leaned aside     And thought of naught to say,     And morning found the breeze     A hundred miles away. Poem by Robert Frost

Blueberries Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum In the cavernous pail of the first one to come! And all ripe together, not some of them green And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen! Poem by Robert Frost

The Old Women Of The Ocean To the solemn sea the old women come With their shawls knotted around their necks With their fragile feet cracking. They sit down alone on the shore Without moving their eyes or their hands Without changing the clouds or the silence. The obscene sea breaks and claws Rushes downhill trumpeting Shakes its bull's beard. The gentle old ladies seated As if in a transparent boat They look at the terrorist waves. Where will they go and where have they been? They come from every corner They come from our own lives. Now they have the ocean The cold and burning emptiness The solitude full of flames. They come from all the pasts From houses which were fragrant From burnt-up evenings. They look, or don't look, at the sea With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand And the sea erases their calligraphy. The old women get up and go away With their fragile bird feet While the waves flood in Traveling naked in the wind. Poem by Pablo Neruda

Tell Me, Is The Rose Naked? Tell me, is the rose naked Or is that her only dress?. Why do trees conceal The splendor of their roots?. Who hears the regrets Of the thieving automobile?. Is there anything in the world sadder Than a train standing in the rain? Poem by Pablo Neruda

Enigma with Flower Victory. It has come late, I had not learnt how to arrive, like the lily, at will, the white figure, that pierces the motionless eternity of earth, pushing at clear, faint, form, till the hour strikes: that clay, with a white ray, or a spur of milk. Shedding of clothing, the thick darkness of soil, on whose cliff the fair flower advances, till the flag of its whiteness defeats the contemptible deep of night, and, from the motion of light, spills itself in astonished seed. Poem by Pablo Neruda

There Where The Waves Shatter There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks the clear light bursts and enacts its rose, and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds, to one drop of blue salt, falling. O bright magnolia bursting in the foam, magnetic transient whose death blooms and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever: broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea. You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence, while the sea destroys its perpetual statues, collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness: because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics, galloping water, incessant sand, we make the only permanent tenderness. Poem by Pablo Neruda

The Wide Ocean Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit of your gifts and destructions, into my hand, I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel, your vigilant spaces of air and darkness, and the power of your white tongue, that shatters and overthrows columns, breaking them down to your proper purity. Not the final breaker, heavy with brine, that thunders onshore, and creates the silence of sand, that encircles the world, but the inner spaces of force, the naked power of the waters, the immoveable solitude, brimming with lives. It is Time perhaps, or the vessel filled with all motion, pure Oneness, that death cannot touch, the visceral green of consuming totality. Only a salt kiss remains of the drowned arm, that lifts a spray: a humid scent, of the damp flower, is left, from the bodies of men. Your energies form, in a trickle that is not spent, form, in retreat into silence. The falling wave, arch of identity, shattering feathers, is only spume when it clears, and returns to its source, unconsumed. Your whole force heads for its origin. The husks that your load threshes, are only the crushed, plundered, deliveries, that your act of abundance expelled, all those that take life from your branches. Your form extends beyond breakers, vibrant, and rhythmic, like the chest, cloaking a single being, and its breathings, that lift into the content of light, plains raised above waves, forming the naked surface of earth. You fill your true self with your substance. You overflow curve with silence. The vessel trembles with your salt and sweetness, the universal cavern of waters, and nothing is lost from you, as it is from the desolate crater, or the bay of a hill, those empty heights, signs, scars, guarding the wounded air. Your petals throbbing against the Earth, trembling your submarine harvests, your menace thickening the smooth swell, with pulsations and swarming of schools, and only the thread of the net raises the dead lightning of fish-scale, one wounded millimetre, in the space of your crystal completeness. Poem by Pablo Neruda

In My Sky At Twilight In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your form and colour are the way I love them. You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips and in your life my infinite dreams live. The lamp of my soul dyes your feet, the sour wine is sweeter on your lips, oh reaper of my evening song, how solitary dreams believe you to be mine! You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice. Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water. You are taken in the net of my music, my love, and my nets of music are wide as the sky. My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning. In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin. Poem by Pablo Neruda

The Insect From your hips down to your feet I want to make a long journey. I am smaller than an insect. Over these hills I pass, hills the colour of oats, crossed with faint tracks that only I know, scorched centimetres, pale perspectives. Now here is a mountain. I shall never leave this. What a giant growth of moss! And a crater, a rose of moist fire! Coming down your legs I trace a spiral, or sleep on the way, and arrive at your knees, round hardness like the hard peaks of a bright continent. Sliding down to your feet I reach the eight slits of your pointed, slow, peninsular toes, and from them I fall down to the white emptiness of the sheet, seeking blindly and hungrily the form of your fiery crucible! Poem by Pablo Neruda

A Lemon Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight, love's lashed and insatiable essences, sodden with fragrance, the lemon tree's yellow emerges, the lemons move down from the tree's planetarium Delicate merchandise! The harbors are big with it- bazaars for the light and the barbarous gold. We open the halves of a miracle, and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions: creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive: so the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb. Cutting the lemon the knife leaves a little cathedral: alcoves unguessed by the eye that open acidulous glass to the light; topazes riding the droplets, altars, aromatic facades. So, while the hand holds the cut of the lemon, half a world on a trencher, the gold of the universe wells to your touch: a cup yellow with miracles, a breast and a nipple perfuming the earth; a flashing made fruitage, the diminutive fire of a planet. Poem by Pablo Neruda

Magellanic Penguin Neither clown nor child nor black nor white but verticle and a questioning innocence dressed in night and snow: The mother smiles at the sailor, the fisherman at the astronaunt, but the child child does not smile when he looks at the bird child, and from the disorderly ocean the immaculate passenger emerges in snowy mourning. I was without doubt the child bird there in the cold archipelagoes when it looked at me with its eyes, with its ancient ocean eyes: it had neither arms nor wings but hard little oars on its sides: it was as old as the salt; the age of moving water, and it looked at me from its age: since then I know I do not exist; I am a worm in the sand. the reasons for my respect remained in the sand: the religious bird did not need to fly, did not need to sing, and through its form was visible its wild soul bled salt: as if a vein from the bitter sea had been broken. Penguin, static traveler, deliberate priest of the cold, I salute your vertical salt and envy your plumed pride. Poem by Pablo Neruda

Fame Is A Bee Fame is a bee. It has a song — It has a sting — Ah, too, it has a wing. Poem by Emily Dickinson

All Overgrown By Cunning Moss All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of “Currer Bell” In quiet “Haworth” laid. This Bird – observing others When frosts too sharp became Retire to other latitudes – Quietly did the same – But differed in returning – Since Yorkshire hills are green – Yet not in all the nests I meet – Can Nightingale be seen – Poem by Emily Dickinson

Lost In The Forest Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood—- and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. Poem by Pablo Neruda The Voice of the Rain And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it; (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, Wandering, Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.) Poem by Walt Whitman Look Down, Fair Moon LOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene; Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon. Poem by Walt Whitman When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. powerful, western, fallen star! shades of night! O moody, tearful night! great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the star! cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me! harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul! In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle......and from this bush in the door-yard, With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig, with its flower, I break. In the swamp, in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary, the thrush, The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat! Death’s outlet song of life—(for well, dear brother, I know If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would’st surely die.) Poem by Walt Whitman As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free As a strong bird on pinions free,   Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,   Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,   Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.   The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,   Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,   Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of foreign court,  or indoor library;   But an odor I'd bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in         Maine—or breath of an Illinois prairie,   With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia, or Tennessee—or from Texas         uplands, or Florida's glades,   With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite;               And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound,   That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world.   And for thy subtler sense, subtler refrains, O Union!   Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee—mind-formulas fitted         for thee—real, and sane, and large as these and thee;   Thou, mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew—thou         transcendental Union!   By thee Fact to be justified—blended with Thought;   Thought of Man justified—blended with God:   Through thy Idea—lo! the immortal Reality!   Through thy Reality—lo! the immortal Idea!   Brain of the New World! what a task is thine!                        To formulate the Modern…..Out of the peerless grandeur of the         modern,   Out of Thyself—comprising Science—to recast Poems, Churches, Art,   (Recast—may-be discard them, end them—May-be their work is done—         who knows?)   By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past,         the dead,   To limn, with absolute faith, the mighty living present.   (And yet, thou living, present brain! heir of the dead, the Old World         brain!   Thou that lay folded, like an unborn babe, within its folds so long!   Thou carefully prepared by it so long!—haply thou but unfoldest it—         only maturest it;   It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain'd in thee;   Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with         reference to thee,                                             The fruit of all the Old, ripening to-day in thee.)   Sail—sail thy best, ship of Democracy!   Of value is thy freight—'tis not the Present only,   The Past is also stored in thee!   Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone—not of thy western         continent alone;   Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel, O ship—is steadied by thy         spars;   With thee Time voyages in trust—the antecedent nations sink or swim         with thee;   With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou         bear'st the other continents;   Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant:   —Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O helmsman—thou         carryest great companions,                                     Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee,   And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee.   Beautiful World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes,   Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky;   Emblem of general Maternity, lifted above all;   Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons;   Out of thy teeming womb, thy giant babes in ceaseless procession         issuing,   Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength         and life;   World of the Real! world of the twain in one!   World of the Soul—born by the world of the real alone—led to         identity, body, by it alone;                                   Yet in beginning only—incalculable masses of composite, precious         materials,   By history's cycles forwarded—by every nation, language, hither         sent,   Ready, collected here—a freer, vast, electric World, to be         constructed here,   (The true New World—the world of orbic Science, Morals, Literatures         to come,)   Thou Wonder World, yet undefined, unform'd—neither do I define thee;   How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?   I feel thy ominous greatness, evil as well as good;   I watch thee, advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the         past;   I see thy light lighting and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire         globe;   But I do not undertake to define thee—hardly to comprehend thee;    I but thee name—thee prophecy—as now!   I merely thee ejaculate!   Thee in thy future;   Thee in thy only permanent life, career—thy own unloosen'd mind—thy         soaring spirit;   Thee as another equally needed sun, America—radiant, ablaze, swift-         moving, fructifying all;   Thee! risen in thy potent cheerfulness and joy—thy endless, great         hilarity!   (Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long—that weigh'd so         long upon the mind of man,   The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man   Thee in thy larger, saner breeds of Female, Male—thee in thy         athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,   (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,         endear'd alike, forever equal                                Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain;   Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest         material wealth and civilization must remain in vain   Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing Worship—thee in no single         bible, saviour, merely,   Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself—thy bibles incessant,         within thyself, equal to any, divine as any;   Thee in an education grown of thee—in teachers, studies, students,         born of thee;   Thee in thy democratic fetes, en masse—thy high original festivals,         operas, lecturers, preachers;   Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed—the         edifice on sure foundations tied,)   Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought—thy topmost rational         joys—thy love, and godlike aspiration,   In thy resplendent coming literati—thy full-lung'd orators—thy         sacerdotal bards—kosmic savans,   These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophecy.        Poem by Walt Whitman A Clear Midnight THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou         lovest best. Night, sleep, death and the stars. Poem by Walt Whitman Roots And Leaves Themselves Alone ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these; Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the         pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of love—fingers that wind around tighter         than vines, Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the         sun is risen; Breezes of land and love—breezes set from living shores out to you         on the living sea—to you, O sailors! Frost-mellow'd berries, and Third-month twigs, offer'd fresh to young         persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up, Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring         form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers,         fruits, tall blanches and trees. Poem by Walt Whitman On The Beach At Night ON the beach, at night, Stands a child, with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter; And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades.                          From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears; The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky—shall devour the stars only in         apparition: Jupiter shall emerge—be patient—watch again another night—the         Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal—all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall         shine out again,                                            The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again—they         endure; The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall         again shine. Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,    Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades. Poem by Walt Whitman Proud Music Of The Storm PROUD music of the storm!   Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!   Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!   Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!   You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,   Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;   You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!   You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient!   You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;   You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry!                Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls!   Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,   Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber—Why have you seiz'd me?   Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;   Listen—lose not—it is toward thee they tend;   Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,   For thee they sing and dance, O Soul.   A festival song!   The duet of the bridegroom and the bride—a marriage-march,   With lips of love, and hearts of lovers, fill'd to the brim with love;                                                          The red-flush'd cheeks, and perfumes—the cortege swarming, full of         friendly faces, young and old,   To flutes' clear notes, and sounding harps' cantabile.   Now loud approaching drums!   Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?         the rout of the baffled?   Hearest those shouts of a conquering army? Poem by Walt Whitman

Next

1  2