No More Learning

Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick tangle, the
openings, and the pink turf,
Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold--the play
of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, grass, rushes--and the
aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to
the bottom:
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with
his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy
sea-leopard, and the sting-ray.
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths--
breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by
beings like us, who walk this sphere:
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.



_TO THE STATES. _

TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD. [1]


Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your
Arctic freezings! )
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges?
Is that the
President?
Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons.
With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly
awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.

[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor,
succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857. ]



_TEARS. _


Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears;
On the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand;
Tears--not a star shining--all dark and desolate;
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head:
--O who is that ghost? --that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?
Streaming tears--sobbing tears--throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;
O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated
pace;
But away, at night, as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosened ocean
Of tears! tears! tears!