.
Sands at seventy.
The sobbing of the bells.
Soon shall the winter's foil be here.
Thou mother with thy equal brood.
To the leaven'd soil they trod.
Yon tides with ceaseless swell.
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed.
Sparkles from the wheel.
Brother of all with generous hand.
As a strong bird on pinions free.

For a just estimate of Whitman, as for a clear comprehension of the
symbolism contained in Leaves of Grass, a few blades of the latter
will not suffice. It must be all, or none. The two poems here given
should be taken, therefore, not as representative of the whole, but as
types of two widely variant moods:

Of olden time, when it came to pass
That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth,
Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,
And took pay for his body.

Curst was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching
hand grew dry;
And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of God,
Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,
and heaven refus'd him,
He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd.

The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalked silently forward
Since those days--many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile
Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.

And still goes one, saying,
"What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?"
And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

Look forth, deliverer,
Look forth, first-born of the dead,
Over the tree-tops of Paradise;
See thyself in yet-continued bonds,
Toilsome and poor, thou bear'st man's form again,
Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,
Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;
With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority,
Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;
Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures' talons,
The nearest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms;
Bruised, bloody, and pinion'd is thy body,
More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,
Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:
And still Iscariot plies his trade.

I

The soul,
Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer
than water ebbs and flows.