2014 Translation Passages
1) from “SONG OF MYSELF”
11
Twenty-eight
young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight
young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight
years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the
fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides
handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the
young men does she like the best?
Ah the
homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you
off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in
the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and
laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did
not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of
the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams
pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand
also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended
tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men
float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who
seizes fast to them,
They do not
know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think
whom they souse with spray.
2) from “BY BLUE ONTARIO'S SHORE”
5
Ages,
precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
America brings
builders, and brings its own styles.
The immortal
poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and pass'd to other spheres,
A work
remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.
America,
curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards,
Stands
removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents,
Does not repel
them or the past or what they have produced under their forms,
Takes the
lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,
Perceives that
it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days,
That its life
has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
And that he
shall be fittest for his days.
Any period one
nation must lead,
One land must
be the promise and reliance of the future.
These States
are the amplest poem,
Here is not
merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,
Here the
doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,
Here is what
moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,
Here are the
roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
Here the
flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.
