After me, vista! 
O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a
    steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,
I perceive I have no time to lose.

} Year of Meteors [1859-60]

Year of meteors! brooding year! 
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the
    scaffold in Virginia,
(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,
I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling
    with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;)
I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships
    and their cargoes,
The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with
    immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,
Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,
And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young
    prince of England! 
(Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your
    cortege of nobles? 
There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,
Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was
    600 feet long,
Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not
    to sing;
Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,
Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting
    over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over
    our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—­with gleams from them would
    gleam and patch these chants,
Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—­year of forebodings! 
Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—­lo! even here one
    equally transient and strange! 
As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,
What am I myself but one of your meteors?

} With Antecedents

     1
With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon, With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the