No More Learning

Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!


25.

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our
way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!


26.

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army! --swift!
spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!



_TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS. _


1.

Earth, round, rolling, compact--suns, moons, animals--all these are words
to be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances--beings, premonitions, lispings of
the future,
Behold! these are vast words to be said.

Were you thinking that those were the words--those upright lines? those
curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words--the substantial words are in the ground and
sea,
They are in the air--they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words--those delicious sounds out of
your friends' mouths?
No; the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,
natural, gay;
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.

Air, soil, water, fire--these are words;
I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate
with theirs--my name is nothing to them;
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil,
water, fire, know of my name?

A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings,
meanings;
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings
and meanings also.


2.

The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth;
The great masters know the earth's words, and use them more than the
audible words.