} Thought

Of Equality—­as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and
    rights as myself—­as if it were not indispensable to my own
    rights that others possess the same.

} To Old Age

I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as
    it pours in the great sea.

} Locations and Times

Locations and times—­what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
    and wherever, and makes me at home? 
Forms, colors, densities, odors—­what is it in me that corresponds
    with them?

} Offerings

A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
    youths, with offerings.

} To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]

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 awhile 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.)

[Book XXI.  Drum-taps]

} First O Songs for a Prelude

First O songs for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,
How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,
How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,
(O superb!  O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! 
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis!  O truer than steel!)
How you sprang—­how you threw off the costumes of peace with
    indifferent hand,
How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard
    in their stead,
How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of
    soldiers,)
How Manhattan drum-taps led.

Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and
    turbulent city,
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
With her million children around her, suddenly,
At dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.

A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,
Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.

From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
Leapt they tumultuous, and lo!  Manhattan arming.