The Essential Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

precedent songs, farewell — by every name farewell,

       (Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons,

       From ups and downs — with intervals — from elder years, mid-age, or youth,)

       “In Cabin’d Ships, or Thee Old Cause or Poets to Come

       Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam,

       Or Beat! Beat! Drums! or To the Leaven’d Soil they Trod,

       Or Captain! My Captain! Kosmos, Quicksand Years, or Thoughts,

       Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more unspecified,

       From fibre heart of mine — from throat and tongue — (My life’s hot

       pulsing blood,

       The personal urge and form for me — not merely paper, automatic type

       and ink,)

       Each song of mine — each utterance in the past — having its long, long

       history,

       Of life or death, or soldier’s wound, of country’s loss or safety,

       (O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared

       indeed to that!

       What wretched shred e’en at the best of all!)

An Evening Lull

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      After a week of physical anguish,

       Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,

       Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,

       Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.

Old Age’s Lambent Peaks

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      The touch of flame — the illuminating fire — the loftiest look at last,

       O’er city, passion, sea — o’er prairie, mountain, wood — the earth itself,

       The airy, different, changing hues of all, in failing twilight,

       Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;

       The calmer sight — the golden setting, clear and broad:

       So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence

       we scan,

       Bro’t out by them alone — so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before;

       The lights indeed from them — old age’s lambent peaks.

After the Supper and Talk

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      After the supper and talk — after the day is done,

       As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,

       Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,

       (So hard for his hand to release those hands — no more will they meet,

       No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,

       A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)

       Shunning, postponing severance — seeking to ward off the last word

       ever so little,

       E’en at the exit-door turning — charges superfluous calling back —

       e’en as he descends the steps,

       Something to eke out a minute additional — shadows of nightfall deepening,

       Farewells, messages lessening — dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and form,

       Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness — loth, O so loth to depart!

       Garrulous to the very last.