But these leaves conning, you con at peril, For these leaves, and me, you will not understand, They will elude you at first, and still more afterward--I will certainly elude you, Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! Already you see I have escaped from you. For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me, Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious, Nor will my poems do good only--they will do just as much evil, perhaps more; For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit--that which I hinted at; Therefore release me, and depart on your way. _SINGING IN SPRING._ These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers: For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades? Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world--but soon I pass the gates, Now along the pond-side--now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked from the fields, have accumulated, Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover them--Beyond these I pass, Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go, Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence; Alone, I had thought--yet soon a silent troop gathers around me; Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck, They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive--thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle, Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them, Plucking something for tokens--tossing toward whoever is near me. Here lilac, with a branch of pine, Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida, as it hung trailing down, Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage, And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side, (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me--and returns again, never to separate from me, And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades--this Calamus- root[1] shall, Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!) And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut, And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar, These I, compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits, Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me, Indicating to each one what he shall have--giving something to each. But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve; I will give of it--but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.