Mirages
(Noted verbatim after a supper-talk out doors in Nevada with two old miners)
More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for; Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset, Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in plain sight, Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shop-fronts, (Account for it or not—credit or not—it is all true, And my mate there could tell you the like—we have often confab’d about it,) People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be, Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in corners, Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons, Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters, Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box, Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves, Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy, (I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,) Show’d to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge, Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.
L. of G. ’s Purport
Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,) But add, fuse, complete, extend—and celebrate the immortal and the good.
Haughty this song, its words and scope, To span vast realms of space and time, Evolution—the cumulative—growths and generations.
Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.