Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,
As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,
The great shadowy groups gathering around,
Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,
Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand
    and word, ascending,
Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent
    with their music,
Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,
Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.

} A Christmas Greeting

Welcome, Brazilian brother—­thy ample place is ready;
A loving hand—­a smile from the north—­a sunny instant hall! 
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
    impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and
    the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck—­to thee from us
    the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,
The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.

} Sounds of the Winter

Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains—­many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train—­from nearer field, barn, house,
The whispering air—­even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,
Children’s and women’s tones—­rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

} A Twilight Song

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,
Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes—­of the countless buried unknown
    soldiers,
Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s—­the unreturn’d,
The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the
    deep-fill’d trenches
Of gather’d from dead all America, North, South, East, West, whence
    they came up,
From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania,
    Illinois, Ohio,
From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas,
(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless
    flickering flames,
Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising—­I hear the
    rhythmic tramp of the armies;)
You million unwrit names all, all—­you dark bequest from all the war,
A special verse for you—­a flash of duty long neglected—­your mystic
    roll strangely gather’d here,
Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes,
Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many
    future year,
Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,
Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.

} When the Full-Grown Poet Came