Alone on the Beach at Night Read online

  I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy.

  (Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?

  Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all your life?

  And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,

  Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)

  Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,

  I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually.

  I give nothing as duties,

  What others give as duties I give as living impulses,

  (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

  Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions,

  Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?

  What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

  I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do,

  I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself,

  I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,

  I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

  After me, vista!

  O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,

  I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower,

  Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

  I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,

  I perceive I have no time to lose.

  Year of Meteors (1859–60)

  Year of meteors! brooding year!

  I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

  I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,

  I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia,

  (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,

  I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;)

  I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,

  The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their cargoes,

  The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,

  Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I welcome give,

  And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of England!

  (Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your cortege of nobles?

  There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)

  Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,

  Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was 600 feet long,

  Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing;

  Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,

  Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads,

  (A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,

  Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)

  Of such, and fitful as they, I sing – with gleams from them would I gleam and patch these chants,

  Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good – year of forebodings!

  Year of comets and meteors transient and strange – lo! even here one equally transient and strange!

  As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,

  What am I myself but one of your meteors?

  With Antecedents

  1

  With antecedents,

  With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages,

  With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am,

  With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome,

  With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon,

  With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys,

  With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle,

  With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk,

  With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent,

  With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,

  With the fading religions and priests,

  With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores,

  With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years,

  You and me arrived – America arrived and making this year,

  This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

  2

  O but it is not the years – it is I, it is You,

  We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,

  We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more,

  We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good,

  All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,

  The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,

  Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.

  As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)

  I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,

  I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.

  (Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?

  Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)

  I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,

  I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god,

  I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception,

  I assert that all past days were what they must have been,

  And that they could no-how have been better than they were,

  And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,

  And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.

  3

  In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,

  And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time.

  I know that the past was great and the future will be great,

  And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,

  (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake, your sake if you are he,)

  And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races,

  And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come.

  A Broadway Pageant

  1

  Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,

  Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,

  Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,

  Ride to-day through Manhattan.

  Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,

  In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers,

  Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching,

  But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.

  When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,

  When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love,

  When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love spit their salutes,

  When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,

  When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves
, thicken with colors,

  When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,

  When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,

  When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest,

  When the façades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,

  When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves forward visible,

  When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands of years answers,

  I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.

  2

  Superb-faced Manhattan!

  Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.

  To us, my city,

  Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between,

  To-day our Antipodes comes.

  The Originatress comes,

  The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,

  Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,

  Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,

  With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,

  The race of Brahma comes.

  See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,

  As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.

  For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only,

  Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead,

  The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,

  The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,

  The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients,

  Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in the pageant-procession.

  Geography, the world, is in it,

  The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,

  The coast you henceforth are facing – you Libertad! from your Western golden shores,

  The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are curiously here,

  The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,

  Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,

  The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors,

  Confucious himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all,

  Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,

  From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,

  From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from Malaysia,

  These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and are seiz’d by me,

  And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them,

  Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.

  For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,

  I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,

  I chant the world on my Western sea,

  I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,

  I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me,

  I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,

  I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea-islands,

  My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,

  My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,

  Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh’d,

  Lives, works resumed – the object I know not – but the old, the Asiatic renew’d as it must be,

  Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.

  3

  And you Libertad of the world!

  You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of years,

  As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,

  As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her eldest son to you.

  The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,

  The ring is circled, the journey is done,

  The box-lid is but perceptibly open’d, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box.

  Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,

  Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you are all,

  Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you,

  Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.

  Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping?

  Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?

  Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for reasons?

  They are justified, they are accomplish’d, they shall now be turn’d the other way also, to travel toward you thence,

  They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.

  SEA-DRIFT

  * * *

  Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

  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 child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

  Down from the shower’d halo,

  Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

  Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

  From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

  From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

  From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

  From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

  From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

  From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

  From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

  From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

  As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

  Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

  A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

  Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

  I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

  Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

  A reminiscence sing.

  Once Paumanok,

  When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,

  Up this seashore in some briers,

  Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,

  And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

  And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,

  And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,

  And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,

  Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

  Shine! shine! shine!

  Pour down your warmth, great sun!

  While we bask, we two together.

  Two together!

  Winds blow south, or winds blow north,

  Day come white, or night come black,

  Home, or rivers and mountains from home,

  Singing all time, minding no time,

  While we two keep together.

  Till of a sudden,

  May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,

  One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on
the nest,

  Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,

  Nor ever appear’d again.

  And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,

  And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,

  Over the hoarse surging of the sea,

  Or flitting from brier to brier by day,

  I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,

  The solitary guest from Alabama.

  Blow! blow! blow!

  Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;

  I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.

  Yes, when the stars glisten’d,

  All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,

  Down almost amid the slapping waves,

  Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.

  He call’d on his mate,

  He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.

  Yes my brother I know,

  The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,

  For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,

  Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,

  Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,

  The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,

  I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,

  Listen’d long and long.

  Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,

  Following you my brother.

  Soothe! soothe! soothe!

  Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,

  And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,

  But my love soothes not me, not me.

  Low hangs the moon, it rose late,

  It is lagging – O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

  O madly the sea pushes upon the land,

  With love, with love.

  O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?

  What is that little black thing I see there in the white?

  Loud! loud! loud!

  Loud I call to you, my love!

  High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,

  Surely you must know who is here, is here,

  You must know who I am, my love.