No More Learning

Nor for you, for one, alone;
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring:
For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and
sacred Death.

All over bouquets of roses,
O Death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes!
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O Death.


8.

O western orb, sailing the heaven!
Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walked,
As we walked up and down in the dark blue so mystic,
As we walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night,
As you drooped from the sky low down, as if to my side, while the other
stars all looked on;
As we wandered together the solemn night, for something, I know not what,
kept me from sleep;
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west, ere you went, how
full you were of woe;
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the
night,
As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone.


9.

Sing on, there in the swamp!
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes--I hear your call;
I hear--I come presently--I understand you;
But a moment I linger--for the lustrous star has detained me;
The star, my comrade departing, holds and detains me.


10.

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern Sea, and blown from the Western Sea, till there on
the prairies meeting:
These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.


11.

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?

Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the
trees prolific;
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river,
with a wind-dapple here and there;
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and
shadows;
And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
returning.


12.

Lo! body and soul! this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and
the ships;
The varied and ample land--the South and the North in the
light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.

Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty;
The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes;
The gentle, soft-born, measureless light;
The miracle, spreading, bathing all--the fulfilled noon;
The coming eve, delicious--the welcome night, and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.


13.

Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses--pour your chant from the bushes;
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.