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i saw battle-corpses myriads of them and the white skeletons of young men i saw them i saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers
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must i pass from my song for thee from my gaze on thee in the west fronting the west communing with thee o comrade lustrous with silver face in the night
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o captain my captain our fearful trip is done
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but o heart heart heart
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leave you not the little spot where on the deck my captain lies fallen cold and dead
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o captain my captain rise up and hear the bells
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but i with silent tread walk the spot my captain lies fallen cold and dead
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for we cannot tarry here we must march my darlings we must bear the brunt of danger we the youthful sinewy races all the rest on us depend
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we take up the task eternal and the burden and the lesson pioneers o pioneers
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o i mourn and yet exult i am rapt with love for all pioneers o pioneers
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then upon the march we fittest die soon and sure the gap is filled pioneers o pioneers
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never must you be divided in our ranks you move united pioneers o pioneers
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soon i hear you coming warbling soon you rise and tramp amid us pioneers o pioneers
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still be ours the diet hard and the blanket on the ground pioneers o pioneers
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was the road of late so toilsome did we stop discouraged nodding on our way
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yet a passing hour i yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious pioneers o pioneers
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were you thinking that those were the words those upright lines those curves angles dots
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no those are not the words the substantial words are in the ground and sea they are in the air they are in you
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were you thinking that those were the words those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths no the real words are more delicious than they
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the workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth the great masters know the earth's words and use them more than the audible words
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whoever you are motion and reflection are especially for you the divine ship sails the divine sea for you
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each man to himself and each woman to herself such as the word of the past and present and the word of immortality no one can acquire for another not one
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the song is to the singer and comes back most to him the teaching is to the teacher and comes back most to him the murder is to the murderer and comes back most to him
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this is a poem for the sayers of words these are hints of meanings these are they that echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls if they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then
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delve mould pile the words of the earth
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work on it is materials you bring not breaths work on age after age nothing is to be lost
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now i make a leaf of voices for i have found nothing mightier than they are and i have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place
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surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice him or her i shall follow as the water follows the moon silently with fluid steps anywhere around the globe
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all waits for the right voices where is the practised and perfect organ where is the developed soul
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whoever you are now i place my hand upon you that you be my poem i whisper with my lips close to your ear i have loved many women and men but i love none better than you
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the race is never separated nor man nor woman escapes all is inextricable things spirits nature nations you too from precedents you come
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think of the time when you was not yet born think of times you stood at the side of the dying think of the time when your own body will be dying
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think of spiritual results sure as the earth swims through the heavens does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results
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think of womanhood and you to be a woman the creation is womanhood have i not said that womanhood involves all
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with gathering murk with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake south north east west inland and seaboard we will surely awake
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tears tears tears
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youth large lusty loving youth full of grace force fascination do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace force fascination
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the perfect judge fears nothing he could go front to front before god before the perfect judge all shall stand back life and death shall stand back heaven and hell shall stand back
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great is life real and mystical wherever and whoever great is death sure as life holds all parts together death holds all parts together
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him all wait for him all yield up to his word is decisive and final him they accept in him lave in him perceive themselves as amid light him they immerse and he immerses them
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he is the answerer what can be answered he answers and what cannot be answered he shows how it cannot be answered
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his welcome is universal the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is the person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed
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he walks with perfect ease in the capitol he walks among the congress and one representative says to another here is our equal appearing and new
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the english believe he comes of their english stock a jew to the jew he seems a russ to the russ usual and near removed from none
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the living look upon the corpse with their eyesight but without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously on the corpse
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i see one building the house that serves him a few years or seventy or eighty years at most i see one building the house that serves him longer than that
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your farm profits crops to think how engrossed you are to think there will still be farms profits crops yet for you of what avail
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the preparations have every one been justified the orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments the baton has given the signal
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do you suspect death if i were to suspect death i should die now do you think i could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation
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old age alarmed uncertain a young woman's voice appealing to me for comfort a young man's voice shall i not escape
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fair fearful wreck tenement of a soul itself a soul
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from all the rest i single out you having a message for you you are to die let others tell you what they please i cannot prevaricate i am exact and merciless but i love you there is no escape for you
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[footnote : the reader will share my wish that whitman had written sanctus spiritus which is right instead of santa spirita which is methodically wrong
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divine instinct breadth of vision the law of reason health rudeness of body withdrawnness gaiety sun-tan air-sweetness such are some of the words of poems
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the sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems the builder geometer chemist anatomist phrenologist artist all these underlie the maker of poems
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i will make divine magnetic lands with the love of comrades with the life-long love of comrades
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as i walk solitary unattended the announcements of recognised things science the approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions
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i see the ships the vast factories with their foremen and workmen and hear the endorsement of all and do not object to it
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but i too announce solid things science ships politics cities factories are not nothing they serve they stand for realities all is as it should be
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as nearing departure as the time draws nigh glooming a cloud a dread beyond of i know not what darkens me
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camerado this is no book who touches this touches a man
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i will give you all my keys you shall enter as you please as you please shall go again
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when i hear you jingling through all the chambers of my soul how i sit and laugh at you
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(tears and dreams for them for me bitter science the exams are near
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death in whose service is nothing of gladness takes me for the lips and the eyes of god are behind a veil
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when i move the oars love see how the stars are tossed distorted the brightest lost
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there did you see that spark fly up at us even stars are not safe in heaven
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a come and go of march-day loves through the flower-vine trailing screen a fluttering in of doves
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fluent active figures of men pass along the railway and i am woken from the dreams that the distance flattered
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you are always asking do i remember remember the butter-cup bog-end where the flowers rose up and kindled you over deep with a cast of gold
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you ask again do the healing days close up the open darkness which then drew us in the dark which then drank up our brimming cup
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and yes thank god it still is possible the healing days shall close the darkness up wherein we fainted like a smoke or dew
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now who will burn you free from your body's terrors and dross since the fire has failed in me
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'tis the sun who asks the question in a lovely haste for wisdom what a lovely haste for wisdom is in men
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and oh behind the cloud-sheaves like yellow autumn dapples did you see the wicked sun that winked
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i have fetched the tears up out of the little wells scooped them up with small iron words dripping over the runnels
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the harsh cold wind of my words drove on and still i watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys glitter and spill
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if i could have put you in my heart if but i could have wrapped you in myself how glad i should have been
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and oh that you had never never been some of your selves my love that some of your several faces i had never seen
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nay but she sleeps like a bride and dreams her dreams of perfect things
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she lies at last the darling in the shape of her dream and her dead mouth sings by its shape like the thrushes in clear evenings
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two and two are the folk that walk they pass in a half embrace with dark face leaning to face
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so i am not lonely nor sad although bereaved of you my little love
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i move among a kinsfolk clad with words but the dream shows through as they move
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earth of my swaying atmosphere substance of my inconstant breath i cannot but cleave to you
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your presence peering lonelily there oppresses me so i can hardly bear to share the train with you
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yet closely bitten in to me is this armour of stiff reluctancy that keeps me impounded
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for i ache most earnestly for your touch yet i cannot move however much i would be your lover
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will you open the amorous aching bud of my body and loose the burning flood that would leap to you from my heart
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she clung to the door in her haste to enter entered and quickly cast it shut behind her leaving the street aghast
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oh let us here forget let us take the sheer unknown that lies before us bearing the ark of the covenant onwards where she cannot go
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do i not know the darkness within them what are they but shrouds
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runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light stirred by conflict to shining which else were dark and whole with the night
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runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel which else were aslumber along with the whole of the dark swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel
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leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping in a jet from out of obscurity which erst was darkness sleeping
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runs into streams of bright blue drops water and stones and stars and myriads of twin-blue eyes and crops
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of floury grain and all the hosts of day all lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting the darkness into play
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then suddenly she looked up and i was blind in a tawny-gold day till she took her eyes away
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so i held my heart aloft to the cuckoo that hung like a dove and she settled soft
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i echoed with surprise hearing my mere lips shout the answer they did devise
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