} Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours

Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—­I hear the o’erweening, mocking
    voice,
Matter is conqueror—­matter, triumphant only, continues onward.

Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain,
The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,
Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.

I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,
    your mute inquiry,
Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,—­
Old age, alarm’d, uncertain—­a young woman’s voice, appealing to
    me for comfort;
A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?

} As If a Phantom Caress’d Me

As if a phantom caress’d me,
I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;
But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the
    one I loved that caress’d me,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has
    utterly disappear’d. 
And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.

} Assurances

I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul;
I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and
    face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant
    of, calm and actual faces,
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in
    any iota of the world,
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,
    in vain I try to think how limitless,
I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their
    swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day
    be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have
    their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and
    the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are
    provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the
    deaths of little children are provided for,
(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport
    of all Life, is not well provided for?)
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of
    them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has
    gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any
    time, is provided for in the inherences of things,
I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I
    believe Heavenly Death provides for all.