If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—
               Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
               Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
               This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door;—
               Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"—
               Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
               'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
               Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
               Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
               With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
               Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
               Of 'Never—nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
               Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
               She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
               Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!"
               Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
               Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting—
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
               Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
               Shall be lifted—nevermore!

1

Singing my days,  
Singing the great achievements of the present,  
Singing the strong light works of engineers,  
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)  
In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann’d,  
The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;  
Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,   
The Past! the Past! the Past!  
  
The Past— the dark unfathom’d retrospect!
The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows!  
The past—the infinite greatness of the past!  
For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?  
(As a projectile, form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on,   
So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)
 

2

Passage O soul to India!  
Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.  
  
Not you alone proud truths of the world!  
Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,  
But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,
The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams!  
The deep diving bibles and legends,  
The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;  
O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun!  
O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!
You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold!   
Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams!  
You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!  
You too with joy I sing.  

Passage to India!
Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?  
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,    
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,  
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, 
The lands to be welded together.  
  
A worship new I sing, 
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,  
You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,   
You, not for trade or transportation only, 
But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.  


3

Passage to India!  
Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,  
I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open’d,  
I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van,  
I mark, from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance,   
I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d,  
The gigantic dredging machines.  
  
In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)  
I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, surmounting every barrier,
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying freight and passengers,    
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,   
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,  
I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes,   
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts,
I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains,   
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,  
I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,    
I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,  
I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,    
Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,  
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,  
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,  
The road between Europe and Asia.
  
(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!  
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,  
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)  


4

Passage to India!  
Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,  
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.  
  
Along all history, down the slopes,  
As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,  
A ceaseless thought, a varied train—lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise,
The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;  
Again Vasco de Gama sails forth,  
Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass,  
Lands found and nations born, thou born America,  
For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d,
Thou, rondure of the world at last accomplish’d.  


5

O vast Rondure, swimming in space,   
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty,  
Alternate light and day, and the teeming spiritual darkness,  
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,  
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,  
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.  
  
Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,  
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,  
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,   
With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?  
  
Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?  
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?  
Who bind it to us? What is this separate Nature, so unnatural?  
What is this earth, to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours,    
Cold earth, the place of graves.)  
  
Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.  
  
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)  
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,  
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,  
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true Son of God shall come singing his songs.  
  
Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified,   
All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d,  
All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,   
All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, 
The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,   
Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet,  
(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,  
He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)  
Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.  
  

6

Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!  
Year of the purpose accomplish’d!  
Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!  
(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)
I see, O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all,  
Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World,   
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,  
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.  
  
Passage to India!
Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,  
The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.  
  
Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,   
The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth’s lands,  
The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluents,
(I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,)   
The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches suddenly dying,  
On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia,  
To the south the great seas and the Bay of Bengal,  
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha,  
Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors,  
The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe,  
The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese,   
The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,
Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d,  
The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest,  
Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.  

The medieval navigators rise before me,  
The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise,
Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring,  
The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.  
  
And who art thou, sad shade?  
Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,  
With majestic limbs, and pious beaming eyes,
Spreading around, with every look of thine, a golden world,  
Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.  
  
As the chief histrion,  
Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,  
Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,
(History’s type of courage, action, faith,)  
Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,  
His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,  
His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain’d,   
Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
  
(Curious in time, I stand, noting the efforts of heroes,   
Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?  
Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? lo, to God’s due occasion,   
Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,  
And fills the earth with use and beauty.) 
  

7

Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,  
Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,  
The young maturity of brood and bloom,   
To realms of budding bibles.  
  
O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,
Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,   
Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return,  
To reason’s early paradise,  
Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions,  
Again with fair creation. 
  

8

O we can wait no longer,   
We too take ship O soul,  
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,  
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,  
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,  
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.  
  
With laugh, and many a kiss,  
(Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,)   
O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee.
  
Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,  
But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.  
  
O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,   
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,  
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,  
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,   
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,  
I and my soul to range in range of thee.  
  
O Thou transcendant,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,   
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,   
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,   
Thou moral, spiritual fountain— affection’s source— thou reservoir,   
(O pensive soul of me— O thirst unsatisfied— waitest not there?
Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)  
Thou pulse— thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,  
That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,  
Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,  
How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself,
I could not launch, to those, superior universes?  
  
Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,  
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,  
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,  
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,  
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.  
  
Greater than stars or suns,  
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;  
What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?
What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul?  
What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?   
What cheerful willingness for others’ sake, to give up all?  
For others’ sake to suffer all?  
  
Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,  
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,  
As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,   
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.  
  

9

Passage to more than India!
Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?  
O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these?  
Disportest thou on waters such as those?  
Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?  
Then have thy bent unleash’d.
  
Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!  
Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!  
You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.  

Passage to more than India!  
O secret of the earth and sky!
Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!  
Of you O woods and fields! Of you strong mountains of my land!   
Of you O prairies! of you, gray rocks!  
O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!  
O day and night, passage to you!
  
O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!  
Passage to you!  
  
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!  
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!  
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?  
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?   
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?   
  
Sail forth— steer for the deep waters only,   
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,  
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.  
  
O my brave soul!  
O farther farther sail!  
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

When the grass was closely mown,
Walking on the lawn alone,
In the turf a hole I found,
And hid a soldier underground.

Spring and daisies came apace;
Grasses hide my hiding place;
Grasses run like a green sea
O'er the lawn up to my knee.

Under grass alone he lies,
Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
To the stars and to the sun.

When the grass is ripe like grain,
When the scythe is stoned again,
When the lawn is shaven clear,
Then my hole shall reappear.

I shall find him, never fear,
I shall find my grenadier;
But for all that's gone and come,
I shall find my soldier dumb.

He has lived, a little thing,
In the grassy woods of spring;
Done, if he could tell me true,
Just as I should like to do.

He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.

In the silence he has heard
Talking bee and ladybird,
And the butterfly has flown
O'er him as he lay alone.

Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows.
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.