1
Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,
These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,
This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for
    you, in each for each,
(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—­0 heaven! 
The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)
This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,
This film of Satan’s seething pit,
This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this
    soundless sea;
Out from the convolutions of this globe, This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe, Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;) These burin’d eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time, To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate, To you whoe’er you are—­a look.

2
A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,
Of youth long sped and middle age declining,
(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,
Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)
Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,
As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open’d window,
Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,
To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,
Then travel travel on.

} Vocalism

     1
Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine
    power to speak words;
Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous
    practice? from physique? 
Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? 
Come duly to the divine power to speak words? 
For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,
    procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
After treading ground and breasting river and lake,
After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,
    after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing
    obstructions,
After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,
    woman, the divine power to speak words;
Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all—­none
    refuse, all attend,
Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities,
    hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in
    close ranks,
They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the
    mouth of that man or that woman.

     2
O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?  Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere
    around the globe.

All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? where is the develop’d soul? 
For I see every word utter’d thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
    impossible on less terms.