Short Poems

ON my northwest coast in the midst of the night, a fishermen's group
stands watching;
Out on the lake, that expands before them, others are spearing
salmon;
The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,
Bearing a Torch a-blaze at the prow.

A THOUSAND perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
youths, with offerings.

LOCATIONS and times--what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors--what is it in me that corresponds
with them?

THITHER, as I look, I see each result and glory retracing itself and
nestling close, always obligated;
Thither hours, months, years--thither trades, compacts,
establishments, even the most minute;
Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;
Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,
As a father, to his father going, takes his children along with him.

OTHERS may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in
art, or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river--also the
western prairie-scent,
And fully exudes it again.

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own
name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.

To you, your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
the sound of your name?

I SEE in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as
it pours in the great Sea.

PENSIVE and faltering,
The words, the dead, I write;
For living are the Dead;
(Haply the only living, only real,
And I the apparition--I the spectre.)

AS I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields--or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

WHAT ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?
Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect
pilot needs?
Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,
Whom, in a little boat, putting off, and rowing, I, hailing you,
offer.