SANDS AT SEVENTY. MANNAHATTA. Y city's fit and noble name resumed, MY Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island-shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves. PAUMANOK. Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle-mighty hulls dark-gliding in the distance. Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water-healthy air and soil! FROM MONTAUK POINT. I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak, Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,) The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps-that inbound urge and urge of waves, Seeking the shores forever. TO THOSE WHO'VE FAIL'D. To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead, To calm, devoted engineers-to over-ardent travelers-to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition-I'd rear a laurel-cover'd monument, High, high above the rest-To all cut off before their time, Quench'd by an early death. A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE. A carol closing sixty-nine-a résumé—a repetition, Of you, my Land-your rivers, prairies, States-you, mottled Your aggregate retain'd entire Of north, south, east and west, your items all; Of me myself the jocund heart yet beating in my breast, The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia falling pall-like round me, The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct, The undiminish'd faith-the groups of loving friends. THE BRAVEST SOLDIERS. Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; But the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown. A FONT OF TYPE. This latent mine-these unlaunch'd voices-passionate powers, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers slumbering. AS I SIT WRITING HERE. As I sit writing here, sick and grown old, Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities, Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, May filter in my daily songs. MY CANARY BIRD. Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books, Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations ? QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR. Approaching, nearing, curious, Thou dim, uncertain spectre-bringest thou life or death? Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now, Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching? THE WALLABOUT MARTYRS. [In Brooklyn, in an old vault, mark'd by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest Revolutionary patriots from the British prison ships and prisons of the times of 1776-83, in and around New York, and from all over Long Island; originally buried· many thousands of them-in trenches in the Wallabout sands.] Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses, More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander, Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones, Once living men—once resolute courage, aspiration, strength, The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America. THE FIRST DANDELION. Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass-innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face. AMERICA. Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, Chair'd in the adamant of Time. MEMORIES. How sweet the silent backward tracings! The wanderings as in dreams-the meditation of old times resumed their loves, joys, persons, voyages. |