} Interpolation Sounds

Over and through the burial chant,
Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests,
To me come interpolation sounds not in the show—­plainly to me,
    crowding up the aisle and from the window,
Of sudden battle’s hurry and harsh noises—­war’s grim game to sight
    and ear in earnest;
The scout call’d up and forward—­the general mounted and his aides
    around him—­the new-brought word—­the instantaneous order issued;
The rifle crack—­the cannon thud—­the rushing forth of men from their
    tents;
The clank of cavalry—­the strange celerity of forming ranks—­the
    slender bugle note;
The sound of horses’ hoofs departing—­saddles, arms, accoutrements.

} To the Sun-Set Breeze

Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,
Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,
Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing
Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;
Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better
    than talk, book, art,
(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the
    rest—­and this is of them,)
So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—­thy soothing fingers
    my face and hands,
Thou, messenger—­magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,
(Distances balk’d—­occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)
I feel the sky, the prairies vast—­I feel the mighty northern lakes,
I feel the ocean and the forest—­somehow I feel the globe itself
    swift-swimming in space;
Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—­haply from endless store,
    God-sent,
(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)
Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and
    cannot tell,
Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation?  Law’s, all
    Astronomy’s last refinement? 
Hast thou no soul?  Can I not know, identify thee?

} Old Chants

An ancient song, reciting, ending,
Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,
Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,
Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,
And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.

(Of many debts incalculable,
Haply our New World’s chieftest debt is to old poems.)

Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,
Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,
The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,
The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,
The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,
Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,
The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,
The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,
Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,
The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,