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SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! | |
| Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; | |
| The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, | |
| The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top; | |
| The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens; | 5 |
| The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face; | |
| The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face; | |
| The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children; | |
| The face of an amour, the face of veneration; | |
| The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock; | 10 |
| The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face; | |
| A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper; | |
| A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder. | |
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| Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and faces: | |
| I see them, and complain not, and am content with all. | 15 |
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2
Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their own finale? | |
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| This now is too lamentable a face for a man; | |
| Some abject louse, asking leave to be—cringing for it; | |
| Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole. | |
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| This face is a dog’s snout, sniffing for garbage; | 20 |
| Snakes nest in that mouth—I hear the sibilant threat. | |
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| This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea; | |
| Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go. | |
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| This is a face of bitter herbs—this an emetic—they need no label; | |
| And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard. | 25 |
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| This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry, | |
| Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites, | |
| Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails, | |
| The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well. | |
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| This face is bitten by vermin and worms, | 30 |
| And this is some murderer’s knife, with a half-pull’d scabbard. | |
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| This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee; | |
| An unceasing death-bell tolls there. | |
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3
Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of the great round globe! | |
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| Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas’d and cadaverous march? | 35 |
| Well, you cannot trick me. | |
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| I see your rounded, never-erased flow; | |
| I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. | |
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| Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats; | |
| You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will. | 40 |
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| I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum; | |
| And I knew for my consolation what they knew not; | |
| I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, | |
| The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement; | |
| And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, | 45 |
| And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm’d, every inch as good as myself. | |
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4
The Lord advances, and yet advances; | |
| Always the shadow in front—always the reach’d hand bringing up the laggards. | |
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| Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming; | |
| I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way, | 50 |
| I hear victorious drums. | |
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| This face is a life-boat; | |
| This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest; | |
| This face is flavor’d fruit, ready for eating; | |
| This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good. | 55 |
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| These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake; | |
| They show their descent from the Master himself. | |
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| Off the word I have spoken, I except not one—red, white, black, are all deific; | |
| In each house is the ovum—it comes forth after a thousand years. | |
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| Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me; | 60 |
| Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me; | |
| I read the promise, and patiently wait. | |
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| This is a full-grown lily’s face, | |
| She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden pickets, | |
| Come here, she blushingly cries—Come nigh to me, limber-hipp’d man, | 65 |
| Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you, | |
| Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me, | |
| Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders. | |
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5
The old face of the mother of many children! | |
| Whist! I am fully content. | 70 |
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| Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning, | |
| It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, | |
| It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier under them. | |
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| I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree, | |
| I heard what the singers were singing so long, | 75 |
| Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue, | |
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| Behold a woman! | |
| She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky. | |
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| She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, | |
| The sun just shines on her old white head. | 80 |
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| Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, | |
| Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel. | |
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| The melodious character of the earth, | |
| The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go, | |
| The justified mother of men. | 85 |
