that entered from my own, and gave him some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean'd in the corner.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,
and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of
days and faithful of nights,
And chalked in large letters on a board, "_Be of good cheer, we will
not desert you_";
How he followed with them and tack'd with them three days and would
not give it up,
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gown'd women looked when boated from the side
of their prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
sharp-lipp'd unshaved men;
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her
children gazing on,
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing,
covered with sweat.
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the
ooze of my skin,
I fall on the weeds and stones,
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
whip-stocks.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I