O me!  O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
    and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
    struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
    around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—­What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer. 
That you are here—­that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

} To a President

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn’d of Nature—­of the politics of Nature you have
    not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality,
You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,
And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from
    these States.

} I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
    oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
    themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
    neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
    of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
    hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
    prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
    shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
    laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—­all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

} To Rich Givers

What you give me I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I
    rendezvous with my poems,
A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as journey through the States,—­
    why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them? 
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman,
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of
    the universe.

} The Dalliance of the Eagles