No More Learning

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you.
All is recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste,
matured;
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me;
I ate with you, and slept with you--your body has become not yours only,
nor left my body mine only;
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass--you take of
my beard, breast, hands in return;
I am not to speak to you--I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at
night alone;
I am to wait--I do not doubt I am to meet you again;
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.



_OTHER LANDS. _


This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Prussia, Italy, France,
Spain--or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India--talking
other dialects;
And it seems to me, if I could know those men, I should become attached to
them, as I do to men in my own lands.
O I know we should be brethren and lovers;
I know I should be happy with them.



_ENVY. _

When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty
generals, I do not envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house.

But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them;
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how
affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive--I hastily put down the book, and walk away, filled with
the bitterest envy.



_THE CITY OF FRIENDS. _


I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of
the rest of the earth;
I dreamed that it was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love--it led the rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.



_OUT OF THE CROWD. _


1.

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, _I love you; before long I die:
I have travelled a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you:
For I could not die till I once looked on you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you_.


2.

Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love--we are not so much separated;
Behold the great _rondure_--the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse--yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;
Be not impatient--a little space--know you, I salute the air, the ocean,
and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.



_AMONG THE MULTITUDE. _


Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any
nearer than I am;
Some are baffled--But that one is not--that one knows me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.




LEAVES OF GRASS.



_PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN. _


1.

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star[1] early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned,. . . and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.


2.

O powerful, western, fallen star!