My Picture-Gallery

In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house, It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories! Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death; Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself, With finger rais’d he points to the prodigal pictures.

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed⁠—freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations, To justify the past.

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 as 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?

(Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony, The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken’d ruins, the embers of cities, The dirge and desolation of mankind.)