and warriors,
As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the
    twilight,
(Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls! 
No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)
Yonnondio!  Yonnondio!—­unlimn’d they disappear;
To-day gives place, and fades—­the cities, farms, factories fade;
A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air
    for a moment,
Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

} Life

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;
(Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies—­and fresh again;)
Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new;
Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud
    applause;
Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;
Struggling to-day the same—­battling the same.

} “Going Somewhere”

My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,
(Now buried in an English grave—­and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,)
Ended our talk—­“The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
    learning, intuitions deep,
“Of all Geologies—­Histories—­of all Astronomy—­of Evolution,
    Metaphysics all,
“Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
“Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is
    duly over,)
“The world, the race, the soul—­in space and time the universes,
“All bound as is befitting each—­all surely going somewhere.”

} Small the Theme of My Chant

Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest—­namely, One’s-Self—­
    a simple, separate person.  That, for the use of the New World, I sing. 
Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing.  Not physiognomy alone,
    nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;—­I say the Form complete
    is worthier far.  The Female equally with the Male, I sing. 
Nor cease at the theme of One’s-Self.  I speak the word of the
    modern, the word En-Masse. 
My Days I sing, and the Lands—­with interstice I knew of hapless War. 
(O friend, whoe’er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I
    feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. 
And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than once, and
    link’d together let us go.)

} True Conquerors

Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,)
Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,
Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars;
Enough that they’ve survived at all—­long life’s unflinching ones! 
Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all—­
    in that alone,
True conquerors o’er all the rest.

} The United States to Old World Critics

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,
Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;
As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,
Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,
The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.