More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for;
Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,
Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in
    plain sight,
Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,
(Account for it or not—­credit or not—­it is all true,
And my mate there could tell you the like—­we have often confab’d
    about it,)
People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,
Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in corners,
Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,
Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,
Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,
Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,
(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
Show’d to me—­just to the right in the sky-edge,
Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

} L. of G.’s Purport

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable
    masses (even to expose them,)
But add, fuse, complete, extend—­and celebrate the immortal and the good. 
Haughty this song, its words and scope,
To span vast realms of space and time,
Evolution—­the cumulative—­growths and generations.

Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued,
Wandering, peering, dallying with all—­war, peace, day and night
    absorbing,
Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,
I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death: 
To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years—­
Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

} The Unexpress’d

How dare one say it? 
After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s—­Homer, Shakspere—­the long, long times’
    thick dotted roads, areas,
The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars—­Nature’s pulses reap’d,
All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,
All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,
All human lives, throats, wishes, brains—­all experiences’ utterance;
After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,
Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print—­something lacking,
(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

} Grand Is the Seen

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—­grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing
    the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what
    amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! 
More multiform far—­more lasting thou than they.