Sail out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!

And whence and why come you?

We know not whence, (was the answer,)
We only know that we drift here with the rest,
That we linger’d and lagg’d—but were wafted at last, and are now here,
To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.

Good-bye my fancy—(I had a word to say,
But ’tis not quite the time—The best of any man’s word or say,
Is when its proper place arrives—and for its meaning,
I keep mine till the last.)

On, on the same, ye jocund twain!
My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,
Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in
    one—combining all,
My single soul—aims, confirmations, failures, joys—Nor single soul alone,
I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America’s, haply humanity’s)—
    the trial great, the victory great,
A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,
    the ancient, medieval,
Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats—here
    at the west a voice triumphant—justifying all,
A gladsome pealing cry—a song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction;
I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the
    best sooner than the worst)—And now I chant old age,
(My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,
    autumn’s spread,
I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses
    winter-cool’d the same;)
As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and love,
wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,
On, on ye jocund twain! continue on the same!

After surmounting three-score and ten,
With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,
My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing
    passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4,
As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or
    haply after battle,
To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,
    with vital voice,
Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.

A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages:
(Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
    non-realities.)

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy,
One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,
The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;
Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

From east and west across the horizon’s edge,
Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us:
But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas—a battle-contest yet! bear
    lively there!
(Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!)
Put on the old ship all her power to-day!
Crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal studding-sails,
Out challenge and defiance—flags and flaunting pennants added,
As we take to the open—take to the deepest, freest waters.

Have I no weapon-word for thee—some message brief and fierce?
(Have I fought out and done indeed the battle?) Is there no shot left,
For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness?
Nor for myself—my own rebellious self in thee?

Down, down, proud gorge!—though choking thee;
Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter;
Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts.

I doubt it not—then more, far more;
In each old song bequeath’d—in every noble page or text,
(Different—something unreck’d before—some unsuspected author,)
In every object, mountain, tree, and star—in every birth and life,
As part of each—evolv’d from each—meaning, behind the ostent,
A mystic cipher waits infolded.

After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,
Accumulations, rous’d love and joy and thought,
Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers,
Coating, compassing, covering—after ages’ and ages’ encrustations,
Then only may these songs reach fruition.

Add to your show, before you close it, France,
With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods,
    machines and ores,
Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid,
(We grand-sons and great-grandsons do not forget your grandsires,)
From fifty Nations and nebulous Nations, compacted, sent oversea to-day,
America’s applause, love, memories and good-will.

Over and through the burial chant,
Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests,
To me come interpolation sounds not in the show—plainly to me,
    crowding up the aisle and from the window,
Of sudden battle’s hurry and harsh noises—war’s grim game to sight
    and ear in earnest;
The scout call’d up and forward—the general mounted and his aides
    around him—the new-brought word—the instantaneous order issued;
The rifle crack—the cannon thud—the rushing forth of men from their
    tents;
The clank of cavalry—the strange celerity of forming ranks—the
    slender bugle note;
The sound of horses’ hoofs departing—saddles, arms, accoutrements.

Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,
Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,
Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing
Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;
Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better
    than talk, book, art,
(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the
    rest—and this is of them,)
So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers
    my face and hands,
Thou, messenger—magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,
(Distances balk’d—occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)
I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes,
I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself
    swift-swimming in space;
Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless store,
    God-sent,
(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)
Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and
    cannot tell,
Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all
    Astronomy’s last refinement?
Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?

An ancient song, reciting, ending,
Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,
Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,
Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,
And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.

(Of many debts incalculable,
Haply our New World’s chieftest debt is to old poems.)

Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,
Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,
The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,
The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,
The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,
Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,
The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,
The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,
Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,
The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,
Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,
As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,
The great shadowy groups gathering around,
Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,
Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand
    and word, ascending,
Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent
    with their music,
Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,
Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.

Welcome, Brazilian brother—thy ample place is ready;
A loving hand—a smile from the north—a sunny instant hall!
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
    impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and
    the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck—to thee from us
    the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,
The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.

Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains—many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train—from nearer field, barn, house,
The whispering air—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,
Children’s and women’s tones—rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,
Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes—of the countless buried unknown
    soldiers,
Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s—the unreturn’d,
The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the
    deep-fill’d trenches
Of gather’d from dead all America, North, South, East, West, whence
    they came up,
From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania,
    Illinois, Ohio,
From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas,
(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless
    flickering flames,
Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising—I hear the
    rhythmic tramp of the armies;)
You million unwrit names all, all—you dark bequest from all the war,
A special verse for you—a flash of duty long neglected—your mystic
    roll strangely gather’d here,
Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes,
Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many
    future year,
Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,
Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.