Analysis of Faces

   SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road--lo! such
         faces!
   Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
   The spiritual, prescient face--the always welcome, common, benevolent
         face,
   The face of the singing of music--the grand faces of natural lawyers
         and judges, broad at the back-top;
   The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows--the shaved
         blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens;
   The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face;
   The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or
         despised face;
   The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
         many children;
   The face of an amour, the face of veneration;
   The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;              10
   The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;
   A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper;
   A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the
         gelder.

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry,
         faces, and faces, and faces:
   I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their
         own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man;
   Some abject louse, asking leave to be--cringing for it;
   Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog's snout, sniffing for garbage;                  20
   Snakes nest in that mouth--I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea;
   Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs--this an emetic--they need no label;
   And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly
         cry,
   Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show
         nothing but their whites,
   Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in
         nails,
   The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he
         speculates well.

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,                           30
   And this is some murderer's knife, with a half-pull'd scabbard.

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee;
   An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

Those then are really men--the bosses and tufts of the great round
         globe!

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas'd and
         cadaverous march?
   Well, you cannot trick me.

I see your rounded, never-erased flow;
   I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

Splay and twist as you like--poke with the tangling fores of fishes
         or rats;
   You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.                           40

I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they had at
         the asylum;
   And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;
   I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
   The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;
   And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
   And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm'd, every inch
         as good as myself.

The Lord advances, and yet advances;
   Always the shadow in front--always the reach'd hand bringing up the
         laggards.

Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is
         coming;
   I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the staves of runners clearing the
         way,                                                         50
   I hear victorious drums.

This face is a life-boat;
   This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest;
   This face is flavor'd fruit, ready for eating;
   This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake;
   They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken, I except not one--red, white, black, are
         all deific;
   In each house is the ovum--it comes forth after a thousand years.

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me;                  60
   Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me;
   I read the promise, and patiently wait.

This is a full-grown lily's face,
   She spea