Classic Poem

As they draw to a close,
These songs of the earth and art, war's romanzas and stern . . .
The seaboard air encompasses me and draws my mind to sing nobly of ships . . .
Or the look of the April day draws anthems as of masters from me —
(O, it is not that I have been careless of the fashioned formal songs!)
For rough nature, for gracious reminder, I have sought all my days:
For men and women of the two-fold asking, for democracy and courtesy wherever it showed —
For the honour of flags well-borne at the heads of regiments digne . . .
Of what underlies my songs, the precedent songs, as they draw to a close I think,
Of failures rough crude half formless (yet I understood rarely why)
Of the blurred pictures of rare colour here and there shown on my pages . . .
Yet I have deserved well of men, and the book Leaves of Grass will show it —
Their homes and haunts nobler that I lived. (Hear the laugh ringing from the tavern . . .)
The meeting in market-place or hall, the workers together will remember me.
(In their talk are words like earth or panelled rooms, Baltimore, forced-march; page and maker-look —
The winds of the north still stir their eager questing minds.)

The seed I have sought to plant in them, trefoil, goldenrod and orchard-bloom,
These O precedent songs you also have helped plant everywhere in the world —
When you were launched there was small roughness in the touch of words,
A woman's weapon, a boy's chatter, a thing for barter and loss:
But I have roughed the soul American or Yankee at least to truth and instinct,
And compacted the loose-drifting faiths and questions of men in a few words.