reverberations, chords for the ear of the West joyously sounding, Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable, Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life, (For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give,) These waifs from the deep, cast high and dry, Wash’d on America’s shores?
The Return of the Heroes
There Was a Child Went Forth
There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf, And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid, And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him, Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road, And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen, And the schoolmistress that pass’d on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that pass’d, and the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.