On to oblivion then! 
On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide! 
On for your time, ye furious debouche!

}[V] And Yet Not You Alone

And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
Nor you, ye lost designs alone—­nor failures, aspirations;
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;
Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again—­duly the hinges turning,
Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

}[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In

Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
All throbs, dilates—­the farms, woods, streets of cities—­workmen at work,
Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—­steamers’ pennants
    of smoke—­and under the forenoon sun,
Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
    inward bound,
Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

}[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves

By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade—­some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas—­scenes ephemeral, The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase—­my idle youth—­old age at hand, My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past, By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble—­some
    wave, or part of wave,
Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.

}[VIII] Then Last Of All

Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning: 
Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.

} Election Day, November, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—­nor you, ye limitless prairies—­nor
    your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—­nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
    geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—­nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—­nor
    Mississippi’s stream: 
—­This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—­the still
    small voice vibrating—­America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—­the act itself the main, the
    quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d—­sea-board and inland—­
    Texas to Maine—­the Prairie States—­Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—­the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—­(a swordless conflict,