Others

To A Stranger

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me,

as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,


chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you--your body has become not yours

only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass--you
take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you--I am to think of you when I sit alone, or

wake at night alone,
I am to wait--I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you. 10

To A Historian

YOU who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races--the life
that has exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,
rulers and priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself,
in his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the

great pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

To A Common Prostitute

To a Common Prostitute

BE composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty

as Nature;
Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to


rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for
you.

My girl, I appoint with you an appointment--and I charge you that you
make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then, I salute you with a significant look, that you do not
forget me.

Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling

THOU orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon rufulgent! my special word to thee.

Hear me illustrious!
Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy


touching-distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my
invocation.


(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive, 10
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice--and

thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of
flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains,


Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so


liberally, 20
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of thy
million millions,
Strike through these chants.

Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself--prepare my lengthening
shadows,
Prepare my starry nights.

This Compost

SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew


me.

O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards,


grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? 10

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day--or perhaps I am deceiv'd;
I will run a furrow with my plough--I will press my spade through the


sod, and turn it up underneath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.


Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden, 20
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its


graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on

their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear--the calf is dropt from the cow, the

colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green
leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk--the lilacs bloom in the
door-yards;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead. 30

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which


is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its
tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited



themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever.
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard--that

melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, 40
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a

catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless


successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous

crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from
them at last.

The Sleepers

I WANDER all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and


stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still!
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles!


The wretched features of ennuyés, the white features of
corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of
onanists,


The gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd
rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and
the dying emerging from gates,

The night pervades them and infolds them. 10

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed--he with his palm on the
hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the
husband,

The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps, with her little child carefully wrapt.


The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison--the run-away son sleeps;
The murderer that is to be hung next day--how does he sleep?
And the murder'd person--how does he sleep?


The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, 20
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions--all, all sleep.


I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the

most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
The restless sink in their beds--they fitfully sleep.


Now I pierce the darkness--new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is


beautiful.

I go from bedside to bedside--I sleep close with the other sleepers,

each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, 30
And I become the other dreamers.


I am a dance--Play up, there! the fit is whirling me fast!

I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,
I see the hiding of douceurs--I see nimble ghosts whichever way I
look,
Cache, and cache again, deep in the ground and sea, and where it is
neither ground or sea.

Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine,
Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,
I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,
And surround me and lead me, and run ahead when I walk,
To lift their cunning covers, to signify me with stretch'd arms, and


resume the way; 40
Onward we move! a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music,
and wild-flapping pennants of joy!

I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician;
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after to-day,
The stammerer, the well-form'd person, the wasted or feeble person.


I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly,
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.


Double yourself and receive me, darkness!
Receive me and my lover too--he will not let me go without him.


I roll myself upon you, as upon a bed--I resign myself to the
dusk. 50

He whom I call answers me, and takes the place of my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.

Darkness! you are gentler than my lover--his flesh was sweaty and
panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.


Be careful, darkness! already, what was it touch'd me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
I hear the heart-beat--I follow, I fade away.


O hot-cheek'd and blushing! O foolish hectic! 60
O for pity's sake, no one must see me now! my clothes were stolen



while I was abed,
Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?

Pier that I saw dimly last night, when I look'd from the windows!

Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you, and stay--I
will not chafe you,

I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.

I am curious to know where my feet stand--and what this is flooding
me, childhood or manhood--and the hunger that crosses the
bridge between.

The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,

Laps life-swelling yolks--laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just
ripen'd;

The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,

And liquor is spill'd on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the
best liquor afterward. 70

I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the old woman's,

I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn my grandson's
stockings.

It is I too, the sleepless widow, looking out on the winter midnight,
I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

A shroud I see, and I am the shroud--I wrap a body, and lie in the
coffin,

It is dark here under ground--it is not evil or pain here--it is
blank here, for reasons.

It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be
happy,

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has
enough. 80

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer, swimming naked through the eddies
of the sea,

His brown hair lies close and even to his head--he strikes out with
courageous arms--he urges himself with his legs,

I see his white body--I see his undaunted eyes,

I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on
the rocks.

What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of



his middle age?

Steady and long he struggles,

He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd--he holds out while his strength holds
out,

The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood--they bear him away-they
roll him, swing him, turn him,

His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually
bruis'd on rocks, 90

Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.


I turn, but do not extricate myself,
Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.


The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind--the wreck-guns sound,
The tempest lulls--the moon comes floundering through the drifts.


I look where the ship helplessly heads end on--I hear the burst as
she strikes--I hear the howls of dismay--they grow fainter and
fainter.

I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
I can but rush to the surf, and let it drench me and freeze upon me.


I search with the crowd--not one of the company is wash'd to us
alive;

In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a
barn. 100

Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,

Washington stands inside the lines--he stands on the intrench'd
hills, amid a crowd of officers,

His face is cold and damp--he cannot repress the weeping drops,

He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes--the color is blanch'd
from his cheeks,

He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their
parents.

The same, at last and at last, when peace is declared,

He stands in the room of the old tavern--the well-belov'd soldiers
all pass through,

The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,

The chief encircles their necks with his arm, and kisses them on the
cheek,

He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another--he shakes hands,
and bids good-by to the army. 110

Now I tell what my mother told me to-day as we sat at dinner
together,


Of when she was a nearly grown girl, living home with her parents on
the old homestead.

A red squaw came one breakfast time to the old homestead,
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,
Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop'd her


face,
Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as
she spoke.

My mother look'd in delight and amazement at the stranger,
She look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face, and full and

pliant limbs,
The more she look'd upon her, she loved her,
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity, 120
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace--she cook'd

food for her,
She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and
fondness.

The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the

afternoon she went away,
O my mother was loth to have her go away!
All the week she thought of her--she watch'd for her many a month,
She remember'd her many a winter and many a summer,
But the red squaw never came, nor was heard of there again.

Now Lucifer was not dead--or if he was, I am his sorrowful terrible

heir;
I have been wrong'd--I am oppress'd--I hate him that oppresses me,
I will either destroy him, or he shall release me. 130

Damn him! how he does defile me!
How he informs against my brother and sister, and takes pay for their
blood!
How he laughs when I look down the bend, after the steamboat that
carries away my woman!

Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk, it seems mine;
Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, the tap of my
flukes is death.

A show of the summer softness! a contact of something unseen! an

amour of the light and air!
I am jealous, and overwhelm'd with friendliness,
And will go gallivant with the light and air myself,
And have an unseen something to be in contact with them also.

O love and summer! you are in the dreams, and in me! 140
Autumn and winter are in the dreams--the farmer goes with his thrift,


The droves and crops increase, and the barns are well-fill'd.

Elements merge in the night--ships make tacks in the dreams,

The sailor sails--the exile returns home,

The fugitive returns unharm'd--the immigrant is back beyond months
and years,

The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood, with
the well-known neighbors and faces,

They warmly welcome him--he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well
off;

The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage
home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,

To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill'd ships,

The Swiss foots it toward his hills--the Prussian goes his way, the
Hungarian his way, and the Pole his way, 150

The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.

The homeward bound, and the outward bound,

The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyé, the onanist, the
female that loves unrequited, the money-maker,

The actor and actress, those through with their parts, and those
waiting to commence,

The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee
that is chosen, and the nominee that has fail'd,

The great already known, and the great any time after to-day,

The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form'd, the homely,

The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced
him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,

The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red
squaw,

The consumptive, the erysipelite, the idiot, he that is wrong'd, 160

The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,

I swear they are averaged now--one is no better than the other,

The night and sleep have liken'd them and restored them.

I swear they are all beautiful;

Every one that sleeps is beautiful--everything in the dim light is
beautiful,

The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.

Peace is always beautiful, The myth of heaven indicates peace and
night.

The myth of heaven indicates the Soul;

The Soul is always beautiful--it appears more or it appears less--it
comes, or it lags behind, 170

It comes from its embower'd garden, and looks pleasantly on itself,
and encloses the world,

Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and


clean the womb cohering,

The head well-grown, proportion'd and plumb, and the bowels and
joints proportion'd and plumb.

The Soul is always beautiful,

The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place,

What has arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;

The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,

The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of
the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,

The sleepers that lived and died wait--the far advanced are to go on
in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their
turns,

The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite-they
unite now. 180

The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,

They flow hand in hand over the whole earth, from east to west, as
they lie unclothed,

The Asiatic and African are hand in hand--the European and American
are hand in hand,

Learn'd and unlearn'd are hand in hand, and male and female are hand
in hand,

The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover--they
press close without lust--his lips press her neck,

The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with
measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with
measureless love,

The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the
daughter,

The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is
inarm'd by friend,

The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar-the
wrong'd is made right,

The call of the slave is one with the master's call, and the master
salutes the slave, 190

The felon steps forth from the prison--the insane becomes sane--the
suffering of sick persons is reliev'd,

The sweatings and fevers stop--the throat that was unsound is sound-the
lungs of the consumptive are resumed--the poor distress'd
head is free,

The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother
than ever,

Stiflings and passages open--the paralyzed become supple,

The swell'd and convuls'd and congested awake to themselves in
condition,

They pass the invigoration of the night, and the chemistry of the
night, and awake.


I too pass from the night,
I stay a while away, O night, but I return to you again, and love
you.


Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid--I have been well brought forward by you; 200
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so


long,
I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you--but
I know I came well, and shall go well.

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes;
I will duly pass the day, O my mother, and duly return to you.

The Prairie-Grass Dividing

THE prairie-grass dividing--its special odor breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and


command--leading, not following,
Those with a never-quell'd audacity--those with sweet and lusty
flesh, clear of taint,
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and Governors,
as to say, Who are you?
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never-constrain'd, never
obedient,
Those of inland America. 10

The Imprisoned Soul

AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks--from the keep of the well-closed
doors,
Let me be wafted.


Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper
Set ope the doors, O soul!


Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love!)

The Last Invocation

At the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,
Set open the doors O soul.


Tenderly--be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

The Artilleryman's Vision

WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight
passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the

breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal;
The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the

irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles--the short t-h-t! t-h-t!
of the rifle balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds--I hear the
great shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick,
tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me

again; 10
The crashing and smoking--the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of


the right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the
effect;
--Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging--(the young colonel
leads himself this time, with brandish'd sword;)
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, (quickly fill'd up, no
delay;)
I breathe the suffocating smoke--then the flat clouds hover low,
concealing all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on
either side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and
orders of officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a
shout of applause, (some special success;)

And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in
dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the
depths of my soul;) 20


And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions--batteries,
cavalry, moving hither and thither;
(The falling, dying, I heed not--the wounded, dripping and red, I


heed not--some to the rear are hobbling;)
Grime, heat, rush--aid-de-camps galloping by, or on a full run;
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles,


(these in my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs busting in air, and at night the vari-color'd rockets.

That Music Always Round Me

THAT music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning--yet long untaught

I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;
A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health, with glad notes of


day-break I hear,
A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense
waves,
A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously under and through the
universe,
The triumphant tutti--the funeral wailings, with sweet flutes and
violins--all these I fill myself with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely--I am moved by the exquisite
meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think I
begin to know them.

That Music Always Round Me

THAT music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning--yet long untaught

I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;
A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health, with glad notes of


day-break I hear,
A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense
waves,
A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously under and through the
universe,
The triumphant tutti--the funeral wailings, with sweet flutes and
violins--all these I fill myself with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely--I am moved by the exquisite
meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think I
begin to know them.

That Music Always Round Me

THAT music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning--yet long untaught

I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;
A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health, with glad notes of


day-break I hear,
A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense
waves,
A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously under and through the
universe,
The triumphant tutti--the funeral wailings, with sweet flutes and
violins--all these I fill myself with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely--I am moved by the exquisite
meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think I
begin to know them.

Tests

ALL submit to them, where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to
analysis, in the Soul;
Not traditions--not the outer authorities are the judges--they are
the judges of outer authorities, and of all traditions;
They corroborate as they go, only whatever corroborates themselves,
and touches themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far
and near, without one exception.

Tests

ALL submit to them, where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to
analysis, in the Soul;
Not traditions--not the outer authorities are the judges--they are
the judges of outer authorities, and of all traditions;
They corroborate as they go, only whatever corroborates themselves,
and touches themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far
and near, without one exception.

Song Of The Exposition

AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire;
Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate;
To obey, as well as command--to follow, more than to lead;
These also are the lessons of our New World;
--While how little the New, after all--how much the Old, Old World!


Long, long, long, has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling, 10
Long has the globe been rolling round.


Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia;
Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy, and Achilles' wrath, and Eneas', Odysseus'


wanderings;
Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus;
Repeat at Jerusalem--place the notice high on Jaffa's gate, and on

Mount Moriah;
The same on the walls of your Gothic European Cathedrals, and German,
French and Spanish Castles;
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere--a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.

Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination, 20
Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,


She comes! this famous Female--as was indeed to be expected;
(For who, so-ever youthful, 'cute and handsome, would wish to stay in


mansions such as those,
When offer'd quarters with all the modern improvements,
With all the fun that 's going--and all the best society?)


She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown;
I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance;
I mark her step divine--her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.


The Dame of Dames! can I believe, then, 30
Those ancient temples classic, and castles strong and feudalistic,
could none of them restrain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante--nor myriad memories, poems, old


associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
But that she 's left them all--and here?


Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see Her,



The same Undying Soul of Earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
Expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come--submerged the strata of her

former themes,
Hidden and cover'd by to-day's--foundation of to-day's;
Ended, deceas'd, through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain;
Silent through time the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt--silent those

century-baffling tombs; 40
Closed for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors;
Calliope's call for ever closed--Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and

dead;
Seal'd the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana--ended the quest of the

Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind--extinct;
The Crusaders' streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the

sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone--Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed--vanish'd the turrets that Usk reflected,
Arthur vanish'd with all his knights--Merlin and Lancelot and

Galahad--all gone--dissolv'd utterly, like an exhalation;
Pass'd! pass'd! for us, for ever pass'd! that once so mighty World-now
void, inanimate, phantom World!

Embroider'd, dazzling World! with all its gorgeous legends, myths, 50
Its kings and barons proud--its priests, and warlike lords, and
courtly dames;
Pass'd to its charnel vault--laid on the shelf--coffin'd, with Crown

and Armor on,
Blazon'd with Shakspeare's purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the Animus of all that World,
Escaped, bequeath'd, vital, fugacious as ever, leaving those dead
remains, and now this spot approaching, filling;
--And I can hear what maybe you do not--a terrible aesthetical

commotion,
With howling, desperate gulp of "flower" and "bower,"
With "Sonnet to Matilda's Eyebrow" quite, quite frantic;
With gushing, sentimental reading circles turn'd to ice or stone; 60
With many a squeak, (in metre choice,) from Boston, New York,

Philadelphia, London;
As she, the illustrious Emigré, (having, it is true, in her day,
although the same, changed, journey'd considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous--vigorously clearing a path for

herself--striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,
Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleased, with palpable intent to stay,
She 's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware!

But hold--don't I forget my manners?


To introduce the Stranger (what else indeed have I come for?) to

thee, Columbia:
In Liberty's name, welcome, Immortal! clasp hands, 70
And ever henceforth Sisters dear be both.

Fear not, O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
(I candidly confess, a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,)
And yet the same old human race--the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same--feelings the same--yearnings the same,
The same old love--beauty and use the same.


We do not blame thee, Elder World--nor separate ourselves from thee:
(Would the Son separate himself from the Father?)
Looking back on thee--seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through


past ages bending, building,
We build to ours to-day. 80

Mightier than Egypt's tombs,
Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples,
Prouder than Milan's statued, spired Cathedral,
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
We plan, even now, to raise, beyond them all,
Thy great Cathedral, sacred Industry--no tomb,
A Keep for life for practical Invention.


As in a waking vision,
E'en while I chant, I see it rise--I scan and prophesy outside and
in,
Its manifold ensemble. 90

Around a Palace,
Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth's modern Wonder, History's Seven outstripping,
High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron façades.


Gladdening the sun and sky--enhued in cheerfulest hues,
Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson,
Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom,
The banners of The States, the flags of every land,
A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser Palaces shall cluster.


Somewhere within the walls of all, 100
Shall all that forwards perfect human life be started,
Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.


Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
In every state of practical, busy movement,
The rills of Civilization.


Materials here, under your eye, shall change their shape, as if by



magic;
The cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field,
Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth,

before you:
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes, and all the new
ones;
You shall see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then
bread baked by the bakers; 110
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and
on till they become bullion;
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing
stick is;
You shall mark, in amazement, the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,
shedding the printed leaves steady and fast:
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.

In large calm halls, a stately Museum shall teach you the infinite,
solemn lessons of Minerals;
In another, woods, plants, Vegetation shall be illustrated--in
another Animals, animal life and development.

One stately house shall be the Music House;
Others for other Arts--Learning, the Sciences, shall all be here;
None shall be slighted--none but shall here be honor'd, help'd,


exampled.

This, this and these, America, shall be your Pyramids and

Obelisks, 120
Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
Your temple at Olympia.

The male and female many laboring not,
Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
With precious benefits to both--glory to all,
To thee, America--and thee, Eternal Muse.


And here shall ye inhabit, Powerful Matrons!
In your vast state, vaster than all the old;
Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes, 130
Practical, peaceful life--the people's life--the People themselves,
Lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace--elate, secure in peace.


Away with themes of war! away with War itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return, that show of
blacken'd, mutilated corpses!
That hell unpent, and raid of blood--fit for wild tigers, or for lop


tongued wolves--not reasoning men!
And in its stead speed Industry's campaigns!
With thy undaunted armies, Engineering!


Thy pennants, Labor, loosen'd to the breeze!
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!

Away with old romance! 140

Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts!

Away with love-verses, sugar'd in rhyme--the intrigues, amours of
idlers,

Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music
slide;

The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,

With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.

To you, ye Reverent, sane Sisters,

To this resplendent day, the present scene,

These eyes and ears that like some broad parterre bloom up around,
before me,

I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for Art,

To exalt the present and the real, 150

To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,

To sing, in songs, how exercise and chemical life are never to be
baffled;

Boldly to thee, America, to-day! and thee, Immortal Muse!

To practical, manual work, for each and all--to plough, hoe, dig,

To plant and tend the tree, the berry, the vegetables, flowers,

For every man to see to it that he really do something--for every
woman too;

To use the hammer, and the saw, (rip or cross-cut,)

To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,

To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,

To invent a little--something ingenious--to aid the washing, cooking,
cleaning, 160

And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.

I say I bring thee, Muse, to-day and here,

All occupations, duties broad and close,

Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,

The old, old general burdens, interests, joys,

The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,

The house-comforts--the house itself, and all its belongings,

Food and its preservations--chemistry applied to it;

Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded Man or
Woman--the perfect, longeve Personality,

And helps its present life to health and happiness--and shapes its
Soul, 170

For the eternal Real Life to come.


With latest materials, works,
Steam-power, the great Express lines, gas, petroleum,
These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable,
The Pacific Railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis tunnel;
Science advanced, in grandeur and reality, analyzing every thing,



This world all spann'd with iron rails--with lines of steamships
threading every sea,
Our own Rondure, the current globe I bring.


And thou, high-towering One--America!
Thy swarm of offspring towering high--yet higher thee, above all


towering, 180
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union, holding all--fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I bring.

Thou--also thou, a world!
With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
Rounding by thee in One--one common orbic language,
One common indivisible destiny and Union.


And by the spells which ye vouchsafe,
To those, your ministers in earnest,
I here personify and call my themes, 190
To make them pass before ye.


Behold, America! (And thou, ineffable Guest and Sister!)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands:
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
As in procession coming.


Behold! the sea itself!
And on its limitless, heaving breast, thy ships:
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green


and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port!
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 200

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
Wielding all day their axes!


Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels--thy oarsmen!
Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms!


There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths, swinging their sledges;
Overhand so steady--overhand they turn and fall, with joyous clank,
Like a tumult of laughter.


Behold! (for still the procession moves,) 210
Behold, Mother of All, thy countless sailors, boatmen, coasters!
The myriads of thy young and old mechanics!
Mark--mark the spirit of invention everywhere--thy rapid patents,
Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising;



See, from their chimneys, how the tall flame-fires stream!

Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,

Thy wealthy Daughter-States, Eastern, and Western,

The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas,
and the rest;

Thy limitless crops--grass, wheat, sugar, corn, rice, hemp, hops,

Thy barns all fill'd--thy endless freight-trains, and thy bulging
store-houses, 220

The grapes that ripen on thy vines--the apples in thy orchards,

Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes--thy coal--thy gold and
silver,

The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

All thine, O sacred Union!
Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines,
City and State--North, South, item and aggregate,
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!


Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all!

For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as
God,)

Without thee, neither all nor each, nor land, home, 230

Ship, nor mine--nor any here, this day, secure,

Nor aught, nor any day secure.

And thou, thy Emblem, waving over all!

Delicate beauty! a word to thee, (it may be salutary;)

Remember, thou hast not always been, as here to-day, so comfortably
ensovereign'd;

In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee, flag;

Not quite so trim and whole, and freshly blooming, in folds of
stainless silk;

But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter'd
staff,

Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast, with desperate
hands,

Savagely struggled for, for life or death--fought over long, 240

'Mid cannon's thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell-and
rifle-volleys cracking sharp,

And moving masses, as wild demons surging--and lives as nothing
risk'd,

For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp'd in
blood;

For sake of that, my beauty--and that thou might'st dally, as now,
secure up there,

Many a good man have I seen go under.

Now here, and these, and hence, in peace all thine, O Flag!


And here, and hence, for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!
And here and hence, O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
The poets, women, sailors, soldiers, farmers, miners, students thine!
None separate from Thee--henceforth one only, we and Thou; 250
(For the blood of the children--what is it only the blood Maternal?
And lives and works--what are they all at last except the roads to


Faith and Death?)

While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear

Mother!
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Thee;
--Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross, or


lucre--it is for Thee, the Soul, electric, spiritual!
Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in Thee! Cities and States in
Thee!
Our freedom all in Thee! our very lives in Thee!

Song Of The Exposition

AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire;
Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate;
To obey, as well as command--to follow, more than to lead;
These also are the lessons of our New World;
--While how little the New, after all--how much the Old, Old World!


Long, long, long, has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling, 10
Long has the globe been rolling round.


Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia;
Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy, and Achilles' wrath, and Eneas', Odysseus'


wanderings;
Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus;
Repeat at Jerusalem--place the notice high on Jaffa's gate, and on

Mount Moriah;
The same on the walls of your Gothic European Cathedrals, and German,
French and Spanish Castles;
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere--a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.

Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination, 20
Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,


She comes! this famous Female--as was indeed to be expected;
(For who, so-ever youthful, 'cute and handsome, would wish to stay in


mansions such as those,
When offer'd quarters with all the modern improvements,
With all the fun that 's going--and all the best society?)


She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown;
I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance;
I mark her step divine--her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.


The Dame of Dames! can I believe, then, 30
Those ancient temples classic, and castles strong and feudalistic,
could none of them restrain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante--nor myriad memories, poems, old


associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
But that she 's left them all--and here?


Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see Her,



The same Undying Soul of Earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
Expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come--submerged the strata of her

former themes,
Hidden and cover'd by to-day's--foundation of to-day's;
Ended, deceas'd, through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain;
Silent through time the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt--silent those

century-baffling tombs; 40
Closed for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors;
Calliope's call for ever closed--Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and

dead;
Seal'd the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana--ended the quest of the

Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind--extinct;
The Crusaders' streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the

sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone--Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed--vanish'd the turrets that Usk reflected,
Arthur vanish'd with all his knights--Merlin and Lancelot and

Galahad--all gone--dissolv'd utterly, like an exhalation;
Pass'd! pass'd! for us, for ever pass'd! that once so mighty World-now
void, inanimate, phantom World!

Embroider'd, dazzling World! with all its gorgeous legends, myths, 50
Its kings and barons proud--its priests, and warlike lords, and
courtly dames;
Pass'd to its charnel vault--laid on the shelf--coffin'd, with Crown

and Armor on,
Blazon'd with Shakspeare's purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the Animus of all that World,
Escaped, bequeath'd, vital, fugacious as ever, leaving those dead
remains, and now this spot approaching, filling;
--And I can hear what maybe you do not--a terrible aesthetical

commotion,
With howling, desperate gulp of "flower" and "bower,"
With "Sonnet to Matilda's Eyebrow" quite, quite frantic;
With gushing, sentimental reading circles turn'd to ice or stone; 60
With many a squeak, (in metre choice,) from Boston, New York,

Philadelphia, London;
As she, the illustrious Emigré, (having, it is true, in her day,
although the same, changed, journey'd considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous--vigorously clearing a path for

herself--striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,
Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleased, with palpable intent to stay,
She 's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware!

But hold--don't I forget my manners?


To introduce the Stranger (what else indeed have I come for?) to

thee, Columbia:
In Liberty's name, welcome, Immortal! clasp hands, 70
And ever henceforth Sisters dear be both.

Fear not, O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
(I candidly confess, a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,)
And yet the same old human race--the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same--feelings the same--yearnings the same,
The same old love--beauty and use the same.


We do not blame thee, Elder World--nor separate ourselves from thee:
(Would the Son separate himself from the Father?)
Looking back on thee--seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through


past ages bending, building,
We build to ours to-day. 80

Mightier than Egypt's tombs,
Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples,
Prouder than Milan's statued, spired Cathedral,
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
We plan, even now, to raise, beyond them all,
Thy great Cathedral, sacred Industry--no tomb,
A Keep for life for practical Invention.


As in a waking vision,
E'en while I chant, I see it rise--I scan and prophesy outside and
in,
Its manifold ensemble. 90

Around a Palace,
Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth's modern Wonder, History's Seven outstripping,
High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron façades.


Gladdening the sun and sky--enhued in cheerfulest hues,
Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson,
Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom,
The banners of The States, the flags of every land,
A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser Palaces shall cluster.


Somewhere within the walls of all, 100
Shall all that forwards perfect human life be started,
Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.


Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
In every state of practical, busy movement,
The rills of Civilization.


Materials here, under your eye, shall change their shape, as if by



magic;
The cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field,
Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth,

before you:
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes, and all the new
ones;
You shall see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then
bread baked by the bakers; 110
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and
on till they become bullion;
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing
stick is;
You shall mark, in amazement, the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,
shedding the printed leaves steady and fast:
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.

In large calm halls, a stately Museum shall teach you the infinite,
solemn lessons of Minerals;
In another, woods, plants, Vegetation shall be illustrated--in
another Animals, animal life and development.

One stately house shall be the Music House;
Others for other Arts--Learning, the Sciences, shall all be here;
None shall be slighted--none but shall here be honor'd, help'd,


exampled.

This, this and these, America, shall be your Pyramids and

Obelisks, 120
Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
Your temple at Olympia.

The male and female many laboring not,
Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
With precious benefits to both--glory to all,
To thee, America--and thee, Eternal Muse.


And here shall ye inhabit, Powerful Matrons!
In your vast state, vaster than all the old;
Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes, 130
Practical, peaceful life--the people's life--the People themselves,
Lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace--elate, secure in peace.


Away with themes of war! away with War itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return, that show of
blacken'd, mutilated corpses!
That hell unpent, and raid of blood--fit for wild tigers, or for lop


tongued wolves--not reasoning men!
And in its stead speed Industry's campaigns!
With thy undaunted armies, Engineering!


Thy pennants, Labor, loosen'd to the breeze!
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!

Away with old romance! 140

Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts!

Away with love-verses, sugar'd in rhyme--the intrigues, amours of
idlers,

Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music
slide;

The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,

With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.

To you, ye Reverent, sane Sisters,

To this resplendent day, the present scene,

These eyes and ears that like some broad parterre bloom up around,
before me,

I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for Art,

To exalt the present and the real, 150

To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,

To sing, in songs, how exercise and chemical life are never to be
baffled;

Boldly to thee, America, to-day! and thee, Immortal Muse!

To practical, manual work, for each and all--to plough, hoe, dig,

To plant and tend the tree, the berry, the vegetables, flowers,

For every man to see to it that he really do something--for every
woman too;

To use the hammer, and the saw, (rip or cross-cut,)

To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,

To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,

To invent a little--something ingenious--to aid the washing, cooking,
cleaning, 160

And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.

I say I bring thee, Muse, to-day and here,

All occupations, duties broad and close,

Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,

The old, old general burdens, interests, joys,

The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,

The house-comforts--the house itself, and all its belongings,

Food and its preservations--chemistry applied to it;

Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded Man or
Woman--the perfect, longeve Personality,

And helps its present life to health and happiness--and shapes its
Soul, 170

For the eternal Real Life to come.


With latest materials, works,
Steam-power, the great Express lines, gas, petroleum,
These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable,
The Pacific Railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis tunnel;
Science advanced, in grandeur and reality, analyzing every thing,



This world all spann'd with iron rails--with lines of steamships
threading every sea,
Our own Rondure, the current globe I bring.


And thou, high-towering One--America!
Thy swarm of offspring towering high--yet higher thee, above all


towering, 180
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union, holding all--fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I bring.

Thou--also thou, a world!
With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
Rounding by thee in One--one common orbic language,
One common indivisible destiny and Union.


And by the spells which ye vouchsafe,
To those, your ministers in earnest,
I here personify and call my themes, 190
To make them pass before ye.


Behold, America! (And thou, ineffable Guest and Sister!)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands:
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
As in procession coming.


Behold! the sea itself!
And on its limitless, heaving breast, thy ships:
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green


and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port!
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 200

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
Wielding all day their axes!


Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels--thy oarsmen!
Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms!


There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths, swinging their sledges;
Overhand so steady--overhand they turn and fall, with joyous clank,
Like a tumult of laughter.


Behold! (for still the procession moves,) 210
Behold, Mother of All, thy countless sailors, boatmen, coasters!
The myriads of thy young and old mechanics!
Mark--mark the spirit of invention everywhere--thy rapid patents,
Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising;



See, from their chimneys, how the tall flame-fires stream!

Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,

Thy wealthy Daughter-States, Eastern, and Western,

The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas,
and the rest;

Thy limitless crops--grass, wheat, sugar, corn, rice, hemp, hops,

Thy barns all fill'd--thy endless freight-trains, and thy bulging
store-houses, 220

The grapes that ripen on thy vines--the apples in thy orchards,

Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes--thy coal--thy gold and
silver,

The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

All thine, O sacred Union!
Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines,
City and State--North, South, item and aggregate,
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!


Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all!

For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as
God,)

Without thee, neither all nor each, nor land, home, 230

Ship, nor mine--nor any here, this day, secure,

Nor aught, nor any day secure.

And thou, thy Emblem, waving over all!

Delicate beauty! a word to thee, (it may be salutary;)

Remember, thou hast not always been, as here to-day, so comfortably
ensovereign'd;

In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee, flag;

Not quite so trim and whole, and freshly blooming, in folds of
stainless silk;

But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter'd
staff,

Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast, with desperate
hands,

Savagely struggled for, for life or death--fought over long, 240

'Mid cannon's thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell-and
rifle-volleys cracking sharp,

And moving masses, as wild demons surging--and lives as nothing
risk'd,

For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp'd in
blood;

For sake of that, my beauty--and that thou might'st dally, as now,
secure up there,

Many a good man have I seen go under.

Now here, and these, and hence, in peace all thine, O Flag!


And here, and hence, for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!
And here and hence, O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
The poets, women, sailors, soldiers, farmers, miners, students thine!
None separate from Thee--henceforth one only, we and Thou; 250
(For the blood of the children--what is it only the blood Maternal?
And lives and works--what are they all at last except the roads to


Faith and Death?)

While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear

Mother!
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Thee;
--Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross, or


lucre--it is for Thee, the Soul, electric, spiritual!
Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in Thee! Cities and States in
Thee!
Our freedom all in Thee! our very lives in Thee!

Song Of The Exposition

AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire;
Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate;
To obey, as well as command--to follow, more than to lead;
These also are the lessons of our New World;
--While how little the New, after all--how much the Old, Old World!


Long, long, long, has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling, 10
Long has the globe been rolling round.


Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia;
Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy, and Achilles' wrath, and Eneas', Odysseus'


wanderings;
Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus;
Repeat at Jerusalem--place the notice high on Jaffa's gate, and on

Mount Moriah;
The same on the walls of your Gothic European Cathedrals, and German,
French and Spanish Castles;
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere--a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.

Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination, 20
Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,


She comes! this famous Female--as was indeed to be expected;
(For who, so-ever youthful, 'cute and handsome, would wish to stay in


mansions such as those,
When offer'd quarters with all the modern improvements,
With all the fun that 's going--and all the best society?)


She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown;
I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance;
I mark her step divine--her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.


The Dame of Dames! can I believe, then, 30
Those ancient temples classic, and castles strong and feudalistic,
could none of them restrain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante--nor myriad memories, poems, old


associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
But that she 's left them all--and here?


Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see Her,



The same Undying Soul of Earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
Expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come--submerged the strata of her

former themes,
Hidden and cover'd by to-day's--foundation of to-day's;
Ended, deceas'd, through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain;
Silent through time the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt--silent those

century-baffling tombs; 40
Closed for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors;
Calliope's call for ever closed--Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and

dead;
Seal'd the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana--ended the quest of the

Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind--extinct;
The Crusaders' streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the

sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone--Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed--vanish'd the turrets that Usk reflected,
Arthur vanish'd with all his knights--Merlin and Lancelot and

Galahad--all gone--dissolv'd utterly, like an exhalation;
Pass'd! pass'd! for us, for ever pass'd! that once so mighty World-now
void, inanimate, phantom World!

Embroider'd, dazzling World! with all its gorgeous legends, myths, 50
Its kings and barons proud--its priests, and warlike lords, and
courtly dames;
Pass'd to its charnel vault--laid on the shelf--coffin'd, with Crown

and Armor on,
Blazon'd with Shakspeare's purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the Animus of all that World,
Escaped, bequeath'd, vital, fugacious as ever, leaving those dead
remains, and now this spot approaching, filling;
--And I can hear what maybe you do not--a terrible aesthetical

commotion,
With howling, desperate gulp of "flower" and "bower,"
With "Sonnet to Matilda's Eyebrow" quite, quite frantic;
With gushing, sentimental reading circles turn'd to ice or stone; 60
With many a squeak, (in metre choice,) from Boston, New York,

Philadelphia, London;
As she, the illustrious Emigré, (having, it is true, in her day,
although the same, changed, journey'd considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous--vigorously clearing a path for

herself--striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,
Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleased, with palpable intent to stay,
She 's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware!

But hold--don't I forget my manners?


To introduce the Stranger (what else indeed have I come for?) to

thee, Columbia:
In Liberty's name, welcome, Immortal! clasp hands, 70
And ever henceforth Sisters dear be both.

Fear not, O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
(I candidly confess, a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,)
And yet the same old human race--the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same--feelings the same--yearnings the same,
The same old love--beauty and use the same.


We do not blame thee, Elder World--nor separate ourselves from thee:
(Would the Son separate himself from the Father?)
Looking back on thee--seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through


past ages bending, building,
We build to ours to-day. 80

Mightier than Egypt's tombs,
Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples,
Prouder than Milan's statued, spired Cathedral,
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
We plan, even now, to raise, beyond them all,
Thy great Cathedral, sacred Industry--no tomb,
A Keep for life for practical Invention.


As in a waking vision,
E'en while I chant, I see it rise--I scan and prophesy outside and
in,
Its manifold ensemble. 90

Around a Palace,
Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth's modern Wonder, History's Seven outstripping,
High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron façades.


Gladdening the sun and sky--enhued in cheerfulest hues,
Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson,
Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom,
The banners of The States, the flags of every land,
A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser Palaces shall cluster.


Somewhere within the walls of all, 100
Shall all that forwards perfect human life be started,
Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.


Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
In every state of practical, busy movement,
The rills of Civilization.


Materials here, under your eye, shall change their shape, as if by



magic;
The cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field,
Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth,

before you:
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes, and all the new
ones;
You shall see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then
bread baked by the bakers; 110
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and
on till they become bullion;
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing
stick is;
You shall mark, in amazement, the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,
shedding the printed leaves steady and fast:
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.

In large calm halls, a stately Museum shall teach you the infinite,
solemn lessons of Minerals;
In another, woods, plants, Vegetation shall be illustrated--in
another Animals, animal life and development.

One stately house shall be the Music House;
Others for other Arts--Learning, the Sciences, shall all be here;
None shall be slighted--none but shall here be honor'd, help'd,


exampled.

This, this and these, America, shall be your Pyramids and

Obelisks, 120
Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
Your temple at Olympia.

The male and female many laboring not,
Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
With precious benefits to both--glory to all,
To thee, America--and thee, Eternal Muse.


And here shall ye inhabit, Powerful Matrons!
In your vast state, vaster than all the old;
Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes, 130
Practical, peaceful life--the people's life--the People themselves,
Lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace--elate, secure in peace.


Away with themes of war! away with War itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return, that show of
blacken'd, mutilated corpses!
That hell unpent, and raid of blood--fit for wild tigers, or for lop


tongued wolves--not reasoning men!
And in its stead speed Industry's campaigns!
With thy undaunted armies, Engineering!


Thy pennants, Labor, loosen'd to the breeze!
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!

Away with old romance! 140

Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts!

Away with love-verses, sugar'd in rhyme--the intrigues, amours of
idlers,

Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music
slide;

The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,

With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.

To you, ye Reverent, sane Sisters,

To this resplendent day, the present scene,

These eyes and ears that like some broad parterre bloom up around,
before me,

I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for Art,

To exalt the present and the real, 150

To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,

To sing, in songs, how exercise and chemical life are never to be
baffled;

Boldly to thee, America, to-day! and thee, Immortal Muse!

To practical, manual work, for each and all--to plough, hoe, dig,

To plant and tend the tree, the berry, the vegetables, flowers,

For every man to see to it that he really do something--for every
woman too;

To use the hammer, and the saw, (rip or cross-cut,)

To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,

To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,

To invent a little--something ingenious--to aid the washing, cooking,
cleaning, 160

And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.

I say I bring thee, Muse, to-day and here,

All occupations, duties broad and close,

Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,

The old, old general burdens, interests, joys,

The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,

The house-comforts--the house itself, and all its belongings,

Food and its preservations--chemistry applied to it;

Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded Man or
Woman--the perfect, longeve Personality,

And helps its present life to health and happiness--and shapes its
Soul, 170

For the eternal Real Life to come.


With latest materials, works,
Steam-power, the great Express lines, gas, petroleum,
These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable,
The Pacific Railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis tunnel;
Science advanced, in grandeur and reality, analyzing every thing,



This world all spann'd with iron rails--with lines of steamships
threading every sea,
Our own Rondure, the current globe I bring.


And thou, high-towering One--America!
Thy swarm of offspring towering high--yet higher thee, above all


towering, 180
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union, holding all--fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I bring.

Thou--also thou, a world!
With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
Rounding by thee in One--one common orbic language,
One common indivisible destiny and Union.


And by the spells which ye vouchsafe,
To those, your ministers in earnest,
I here personify and call my themes, 190
To make them pass before ye.


Behold, America! (And thou, ineffable Guest and Sister!)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands:
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
As in procession coming.


Behold! the sea itself!
And on its limitless, heaving breast, thy ships:
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green


and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port!
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 200

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
Wielding all day their axes!


Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels--thy oarsmen!
Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms!


There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths, swinging their sledges;
Overhand so steady--overhand they turn and fall, with joyous clank,
Like a tumult of laughter.


Behold! (for still the procession moves,) 210
Behold, Mother of All, thy countless sailors, boatmen, coasters!
The myriads of thy young and old mechanics!
Mark--mark the spirit of invention everywhere--thy rapid patents,
Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising;



See, from their chimneys, how the tall flame-fires stream!

Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,

Thy wealthy Daughter-States, Eastern, and Western,

The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas,
and the rest;

Thy limitless crops--grass, wheat, sugar, corn, rice, hemp, hops,

Thy barns all fill'd--thy endless freight-trains, and thy bulging
store-houses, 220

The grapes that ripen on thy vines--the apples in thy orchards,

Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes--thy coal--thy gold and
silver,

The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

All thine, O sacred Union!
Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines,
City and State--North, South, item and aggregate,
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!


Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all!

For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as
God,)

Without thee, neither all nor each, nor land, home, 230

Ship, nor mine--nor any here, this day, secure,

Nor aught, nor any day secure.

And thou, thy Emblem, waving over all!

Delicate beauty! a word to thee, (it may be salutary;)

Remember, thou hast not always been, as here to-day, so comfortably
ensovereign'd;

In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee, flag;

Not quite so trim and whole, and freshly blooming, in folds of
stainless silk;

But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter'd
staff,

Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast, with desperate
hands,

Savagely struggled for, for life or death--fought over long, 240

'Mid cannon's thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell-and
rifle-volleys cracking sharp,

And moving masses, as wild demons surging--and lives as nothing
risk'd,

For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp'd in
blood;

For sake of that, my beauty--and that thou might'st dally, as now,
secure up there,

Many a good man have I seen go under.

Now here, and these, and hence, in peace all thine, O Flag!


And here, and hence, for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!
And here and hence, O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
The poets, women, sailors, soldiers, farmers, miners, students thine!
None separate from Thee--henceforth one only, we and Thou; 250
(For the blood of the children--what is it only the blood Maternal?
And lives and works--what are they all at last except the roads to


Faith and Death?)

While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear

Mother!
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Thee;
--Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross, or


lucre--it is for Thee, the Soul, electric, spiritual!
Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in Thee! Cities and States in
Thee!
Our freedom all in Thee! our very lives in Thee!

Song Of The Redwood-Tree

A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.


Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky--farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term has come.


Along the northern coast,
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves, 10
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country,
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse,
With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven by strong


arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes--there in the Redwood
forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

The choppers heard not--the camp shanties echoed not;
The quick-ear'd teamsters, and chain and jack-screw men, heard not,
As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years, to


join the refrain;
But in my soul I plainly heard.


Murmuring out of its myriad leaves, 20
Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high,
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs--out of its foot-thick bark,
That chant of the seasons and time--chant, not of the past only, but


the future.

You untold life of me,
And all you venerable and innocent joys,
Perennial, hardy life of me, with joys, 'mid rain, and many a summer


sun,
And the white snows, and night, and the wild winds;
O the great patient, rugged joys! my soul's strong joys, unreck'd by

man;
(For know I bear the soul befitting me--I too have consciousness,

identity,
And all the rocks and mountains have--and all the earth;) 30
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
Our time, our term has come.

Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers,
We who have grandly fill'd our time;
With Nature's calm content, and tacit, huge delight,
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,



And leave the field for them.

For them predicted long,

For a superber Race--they too to grandly fill their time,

For them we abdicate--in them ourselves, ye forest kings! 40

In them these skies and airs--these mountain peaks--Shasta--Nevadas,

These huge, precipitous cliffs--this amplitude--these valleys grand-Yosemite,


To be in them absorb'd, assimilated.

Then to a loftier strain,
Still prouder, more ecstatic, rose the chant,
As if the heirs, the Deities of the West,
Joining, with master-tongue, bore part.


Not wan from Asia's fetishes,

Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house,

(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
scaffolds every where,) 50

But come from Nature's long and harmless throes--peacefully builded
thence,

These virgin lands--Lands of the Western Shore,

To the new Culminating Man--to you, the Empire New,

You, promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.

You occult, deep volitions,

You average Spiritual Manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself-giving,
not taking law,

You Womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and
love, and aught that comes from life and love,

You unseen Moral Essence of all the vast materials of America, (age
upon age, working in Death the same as Life,)

You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould
the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,

You hidden National Will, lying in your abysms, conceal'd, but ever
alert, 60

You past and present purposes, tenaciously pursued, may-be
unconscious of yourselves,

Unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;

You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
statutes, literatures,

Here build your homes for good--establish here--These areas entire,
Lands of the Western Shore,

We pledge, we dedicate to you.

For man of you--your characteristic Race,

Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow--here tower, proportionate to
Nature,

Here climb the vast, pure spaces, unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or
roof,

Here laugh with storm or sun--here joy--here patiently inure,


Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others' formulas heed)--here

fill his time, 70
To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last,
To disappear, to serve.

Thus, on the northern coast,
In the echo of teamsters' calls, and the clinking chains, and the
music of choppers' axes,
The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the
groan,
Such words combined from the Redwood-tree--as of wood-spirits' voices

ecstatic, ancient and rustling,
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
From the Cascade range to the Wasatch--or Idaho far, or Utah,
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding, 80
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity--the

settlements, features all,
In the Mendocino woods I caught.

The flashing and golden pageant of California!
The sudden and gorgeous drama--the sunny and ample lands;
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado south;
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air--valleys and mountain


cliffs;
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow--the silent, cyclic
chemistry;
The slow and steady ages plodding--the unoccupied surface ripening-


the rich ores forming beneath;
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy race settling and organizing every where;
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the

whole world, 90
To India and China and Australia, and the thousand island paradises
of the Pacific;
Populous cities--the latest inventions--the steamers on the rivers-the
railroads--with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
And wool, and wheat, and the grape--and diggings of yellow gold.

But more in you than these, Lands of the Western Shore!
(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,


till now deferr'd,
Promis'd, to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the Race.

The New Society at last, proportionate to Nature,
In Man of you, more than your mountain peaks, or stalwart trees
imperial, 100
In Woman more, far more, than all your gold, or vines, or even vital
air.


Fresh come, to a New World indeed, yet long prepared,

I see the Genius of the Modern, child of the Real and Ideal,

Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the

past so grand,

To build a grander future.

Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LII

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.


I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.


My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

Song of Myself, XI

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 over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended trembling 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 the pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Song of Myself, XI

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 over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended trembling 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 the pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Song At Sunset

SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic--hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat--you, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.


Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.


Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space--sphere of unnumber'd spirits; 10
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest

insect;
Illustrious the attribute of speech--the senses--the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the


new moon in the western sky!
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.


Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, 20
In the superb vistas of Death.


Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed--to look on my rose-color'd flesh;
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large;
To be this incredible God I am;
To have gone forth among other Gods--these men and women I love. 30


Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on


and on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches


and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the tree--some living
Soul.)


O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching



me and America! 40
I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass
them forward.

I too carol the sun, usher'd, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the
growths of the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.


As I sail'd down the Mississippi,
As I wander'd over the prairies,
As I have lived--As I have look'd through my windows, my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning--As I beheld the light breaking in the


east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach
of the Western Sea;
As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago--whatever streets I have

roam'd; 50
Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and

triumph.

I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues--Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the


universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated
adoration. 60

Shut Not Your Doors, &c.

SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet
needed most, I bring;
Forth from the army, the war emerging--a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing--the drift of it everything;
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect,
But you, ye untold latencies, will thrill to every page;
Through Space and Time fused in a chant, and the flowing, eternal
Identity,
To Nature, encompassing these, encompassing God--to the joyous,
electric All,
To the sense of Death--and accepting, exulting in Death, in its turn,
the same as life,
The entrance of Man I sing. 10