Year of Meteors [ 1859-60

Year of meteors! brooding year!

I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

I would sing your contest for the th Presidentiad,

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia,

( I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,

I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted the scaffold;)

I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,

The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships and their cargoes,

The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,

Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,

And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of England!

( Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your cortege of nobles?

There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)

Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,

Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was feet long,

Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing;

Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,

Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads,

( A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads,

Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)

Of such, and fitful as they, I sing — with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants,

Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good — year of forebodings!

Year of comets and meteors transient and strange — lo! even here one equally transient and strange!

As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,

What am I myself but one of your meteors?