As I listened by the lilacs to the thrush this spring,
The good gray poet said another thing:
The great bell peals, and the great ships wait,
And my Captain and my comrades filing through the gate.

The good gray poet, back from the sea
With battle-rent banner, whispered me:
Filing down the wharves with noiseless feet,
Filing under moon from a long, long street
(A long, long street with fork and bend,
And mountain sunsets at the further end):
Shovel-hatted Puritans with funnel-mouth guns;
Eagle-feather crested bowmen bronze;
Buck-skin trappers, fringed to the thighs,
With beaver-caps frayed over buffalo eyes;
Oregon Trailers, sons and sires,
With gun-stocks charred by the prairie fires;
Grizzled Forty-Niners, with picks and barrows;
Log-cabin folk with home-made harrows;
Lasso boys from the ranch-frontiers;
And girl-cornhuskers of the pioneers . . .
Filing under moon from a long, long street,
Tramp, tramp, tramp—to the great sea-fleet.

As I listened in the twilight, after the rain,
The good gray poet said again:
Filing down the piers, over waters black,
Filing through the gate from a long bivouac
(A long bivouac by the stream and the hill,
And the low white stars and the whip-poor-will):
Minute-men with eyelids damp from sleep;
Valley Forge men who limp and creep;
Yorktown men, and Lafayette men,
And Red Coats girt with their swords again;
And the great Sphinx-Head with lips so tight,
With criss-cross belt, on a war-horse white.
And I saw John Brown,—and the rice-swamp blacks
Mopping the sweat with bandanas from their backs.
And I saw Marshal Grant—who but he!—
And Pickett and his men who charged for Lee;
And the blue and the gray and the gray and the blue
(Blent by the years to an olive hue);
And Schurz and his burghers with mud-spattered coats,
Banded with bunting, sobs in throats …
From a long bivouac, filing to the tide—
Tramp, tramp, tramp—where the big boats ride.

As I listened in the fragrance of my door-yard plat,
Said the good gray poet, in his army-hat:
Marching under moon, between long aisles
Of the dim dank heads of the creaking piles;
Marching in the mists to the eery deep,
Out of the hinterlands of old sleep,
Shadowy bulks, primeval births,
Witch-wild wonders (ours and earth's);
I saw gnarled shapes of Oaks afoot,
With leafy arms and sprawling root;
And wrinkle-skinned trunks of Elms and Pines,
With savage girdles of torn woodbines
(And elfin bands I saw between,
Midnight dewed and moony-green—
Bands of the Wildrose trooped and trod,
And the Maidenhair and the Goldenrod);
And the Father-of-Waters, within his hands
From many a stream wet willow-wands;
And the bald Crag-Heads, with a mountain pace,
In their cloudy midst the Great Stone Face;
And the Manitou-rocks with painted side,
Capped by the snows of the Great Divide …
Out of the hinterlands of old sleep,
Marching under moon to the edge of the deep,
Marching in the sea-mist (phantoms? no!)—
Tramp, tramp, tramp—to the ships below.

The good gray poet of things that are
Whispered by the lilacs under one moist star:
Singing in the night, past towers and tiers,
Singing through the gate and down the piers:
Memorial voices, profiles known,
From north and south, from east and west,
Prophet figures, higher than the rest,
Like wraiths of statues, bronze and stone:
Knee-buckled Franklin, with bony wrist
And faggots of the lightning bunched in fist;
Lithe as the west-wind, calm as the sun,
Peering down the moonglade, Emerson
(Peering down an alley, out to sea,
Where the transports leave his vision free);
And bearded Bryant, as cloaked for the rain,
And the lion-head of good Mark Twain;
And midst a hundred, with strange awe
In a garland of grass myself I saw;
All singing in the night to one low tune—
Tramp, tramp, tramp—in the April moon:
“M Y Captain LEANS BY THE GANGWAY SIDE ,
A WAITING US AND THE TURNING TIDE —
With BENDED HEAD AND ARMS ON BREAST ,
A WAITING US FOR THE GREAT SEA-QUEST .”