No More Learning

O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion, for me! the torchlight
procession!
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons
following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as
now;
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the
sight of the wounded;
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus--with varied chorus
and light of the sparkling eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!



_OVER THE CARNAGE. _


1.

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,--
Be not disheartened--Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible--they shall yet make
Columbia victorious.

Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be victorious!
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.

No danger shall baulk Columbia's lovers;
If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade;
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be
friends triune,
More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.

To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come;
Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.
It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection;
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly;
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron;
I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.


2.

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
--Nay--nor the world nor any living thing will so cohere.



_THE MOTHER OF ALL. _


Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all,
Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields,
gazing;
As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.
"Absorb them well, O my earth! " she cried--"I charge you, lose not my sons!
lose not an atom;
And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood;
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly,
And all you essences of soil and growth--and you, O my rivers' depths;
And you mountain-sides--and the woods where my dear children's blood,
trickling, reddened;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb--my young men's beautiful bodies absorb--and their precious,
precious, precious blood;
Which, holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year
hence,
In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence;
In blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings--give my
immortal heroes;
Exhale me them centuries hence--breathe me their breath--let not an atom be
lost.
O years and graves! O air and soil!