No More Learning

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.

Sing on, dearest brother--warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.

O liquid, and free, and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer!
You only I hear,. . . yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;)
Yet the lilac, with mastering odour, holds me.


14.

Now while I sat in the day, and looked forth,
In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the
farmer preparing his crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and the storms;
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of
children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides,--and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with
labour,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals
and minutiae of daily usages;
And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities
pent--lo! then and there,
Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail;
And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of Death.