The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy
    breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,
Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face
    with hectic,
But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all,
Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,
They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,
While thou, Time’s spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still
    extricating, fusing,
Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with immortal blent,)
Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the
    body and the mind,
The soul, its destinies.

The soul, its destinies, the real real,
(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)
In thee America, the soul, its destinies,
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! 
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d, (by these thyself solidifying,)
Thou mental, moral orb—­thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! 
The Present holds thee not—­for such vast growth as thine,
For such unparallel’d flight as thine, such brood as thine,
The future only holds thee and can hold thee.

} A Paumanok Picture

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting—­they discover a thick school of mossbonkers
    —­they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the
    beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand
    ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,
    the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.

[Book XXXII.  From noon to starry night]

} Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling

Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! 
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.

Hear me illustrious! 
Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy
    touching-distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.

(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—­and
    thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of
    flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)