What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?
Are the things so strange and marvellous you see or have seen?



NOT YOUTH PERTAINS TO ME.


Not youth pertains to me,
Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,
In the learn'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still, for learning
inures not to me,
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me-yet there are two or three things
inure to me,
I have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier,
And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,
Composed these songs.



RACE OF VETERANS.


Race of veterans--race of victors!
Race of the soil, ready for conflict--race of the conquering march;
(No more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race,)
Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,