Upon a Western prairie once I met
A flock of pelicans — a glorious sight!
Now in the sun they gleamed a dazzling white,
Now, circling, darkened to a silhouette;
Great-breasted things, with sweeping pinions set
To rhythmic curves of slow, majestic flight,
They rose into the measureless blue height,
Undaunted, radiant — I see them yet.
I see them yet ! for when I turn my eyes
Beyond these city walls of my despite,
Behold their buoyant forms still sweep the skies
Like spirits of the air, incarnate, bright,
And something untamed in me seems to rise
And with them breast those boundless seas of light!
Torture me not with this or that or this,
Love is my master,
you his lesser self;
while you are Love,
I love you generously,
be Eros,
not a tyrannous, bitter mate:
Love has no charm
when Love is swept to earth:
you’d make a lop-winged god,
frozen and contrite,
of god up-darting,
winged for passionate flight.
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!
If we were such and so, the same as these, maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, tumbling half over in the water mirrors, tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, tumbling our purple numbers.
Twirl on, you and your satin blue.
Be water birds, be air birds.
Be these purple tumblers you are.
Dip and get away
From loops into slip-knots,
Write your own ciphers and figure eights.
It is your wooded island here in Lincoln park.
Everybody knows this belongs to you.
Five fat geese
Eat grass on a sod bank
And never count your slinging ciphers, your sliding figure eights,
A man on a green paint iron bench,
Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book,
And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots,
Riding against the east,
A veering, steady shadow-
Purrs the motor-call
Of the man-bird
Ready with the death-laughter
In his throat
And in his heart always
The love of the big blue beyond.
Only a man,
A far fleck of shadow on the east
Sitting at ease
With his hands on a wheel
And around him the large gray wings.
Hold him, great soft wings,
Keep and deal kindly, O wings,
With the cool, calm shadow at the wheel.
In the dead of the night
You turned in your troubled sleep
As you heard the wild swans pass;
And then you slept again.
You slept--
While a new world swam beneath
That army of eager wings,
While plainland and slough and lake
Lay wide to those outstretched throats,
While the far lone Lights allured
That phalanx of passionate breasts.
And I who had loved you more
Than a homing bird loves flight,--
I watched with an ache for freedom,
I rose with a need for life,
Knowing that love had passed
The wind is carrying me round the sky;
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
My body is here in the valley —
The wind is carrying me round the sky.
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sing
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
Lone wandering, but not lost.
FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then,
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs—to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas, to sing
theirs,
To Tennessee and Kentucky—to the Carolinas and Georgia, to sing theirs,
To Texas, and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;
To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum, if need be,)
The idea of all—of the western world, one and inseparable.
And then the song of each member of These States.
WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature’s sake, and sweet life’s sake—and
death’s the same as life’s,
Souvenirs of earliest summer—birds’ eggs, and the first berries;
Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;)
Put in April and May—the hylas croaking in the ponds—the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
Blue-bird, and darting swallow—nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings,
The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
Spiritual, airy insects, humming on gossamer wings,
Shimmer of waters, with fish in them—the cerulean above;
All that is jocund and sparkling—the brooks running,
When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt--
A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing
But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing--
And wheeling round and round in sportive coil
Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Toil--
When like an eaglet I first found my Love,
For that the virtue I thereof would know,
Upon the nest I set it forth to prove
If it were of that kingly kind or no;
But it no sooner say my Sun appear,
But on her rays with open eyes it stood,
To show that I had hatch'd it for the air
And rightly came from that brave mounting brood;
And, when the plumes were summ'd with sweet desire,
To prove the pinions it ascends the skies;
Do what I could, it needsly would aspire
To my Soul's Sun, those two celestial eyes.
Thus from my breast, where it was bred alone,
It after thee is, like an eaglet, flown.