Walt Whitman

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.

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.

Starting From Paumanok

STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements;
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city--or on


southern savannas;
Or a soldier camp'd, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in
California;
Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the

spring;
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;
Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri--aware of mighty


Niagara;
Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains--the hirsute and
strong-breasted bull; 10
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow,


my amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountainhawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrival'd one, the hermit thrush from the


swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.


Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.


This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and
convulsions.


How curious! how real! 20
Underfoot the divine soil--overhead the sun.


See, revolving, the globe;
The ancestor-continents, away, group'd together;
The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus


between.

See, vast, trackless spaces;
As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;
Countless masses debouch upon them;
They are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts, institutions,


known.

See, projected, through time,
For me, an audience interminable. 30


With firm and regular step they wend--they never stop,
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;
One generation playing its part, and passing on;



Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn,
With faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me, to listen,
With eyes retrospective towards me,


Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;
Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a programme of chants.


Chants of the prairies; 40
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota;
Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equi


distant,
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.

In the Year 80 of The States,
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-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, 50
(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 now without check, with original energy.

Take my leaves, America! take them, South, and take them, North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you;
And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect


lovingly with you.

I conn'd old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study


me! 60

In the name of These States, shall I scorn the antique?
Why These are the children of the antique, to justify it.


Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers, on other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left,


wafted hither:


I have perused it--own it is admirable,
(moving awhile among it;)

Think nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than
it deserves;

Regarding it all intently a long while--then dismissing it, 70

I stand in my place, with my own day, here.

Here lands female and male;

Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world--here the flame of
materials;

Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avow'd,

The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;

The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,

Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.

The SOUL:

Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
water ebbs and flows.

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the
most spiritual poems; 80

And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,

For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my Soul, and
of immortality.

I will make a song for These States, that no-one State may under any
circumstances be subjected to another State;

And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night
between all The States, and between any two of them:

And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons
with menacing points,

And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:

--And a song make I, of the One form'd out of all;

The fang'd and glittering One whose head is over all;

Resolute, warlike One, including and over all;

(However high the head of any else, that head is over all.) 90

I will acknowledge contemporary lands;

I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously
every city large and small;

And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism,
upon land and sea;

And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

I will sing the song of companionship;

I will show what alone must finally compact These;

I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love,
indicating it in me;

I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were
threatening to consume me;

I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;


I will give them complete abandonment; 100
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades, and of love;
(For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)


I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I advance from the people in their own spirit;
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.


Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I make the poem of evil also--I commemorate that part also;
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--And I say


there is in fact no evil;
(Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land,
or to me, as anything else.) 110

I too, following many, and follow'd by many, inaugurate a Religion--I
descend into the arena;
(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the
winner's pealing shouts;
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)

Each is not for its own sake;
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for
Religion's sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough;
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the


future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of These States must be

their Religion;
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur: 120
(Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without Religion;
Nor land, nor man or woman, without Religion.)

What are you doing, young man?
Are you so earnest--so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?


It is well--Against such I say not a word--I am their poet also;
But behold! such swiftly subside--burnt up for Religion's sake;
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential


life of the earth,
Any more than such are to Religion. 130

What do you seek, so pensive and silent?


What do you need, Camerado?
Dear son! do you think it is love?


Listen, dear son--listen, America, daughter or son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess--and yet it


satisfies--it is great;
But there is something else very great--it makes the whole coincide;
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and

provides for all.

Know you! solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater
Religion,
The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.

My comrade! 140
For you, to share with me, two greatnesses--and a third one, rising
inclusive and more resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion.

Melange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;
Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us, in the air, that we


know not of;
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;
These selecting--these, in hints, demanded of me.

Not he, with a daily kiss, onward from childhood kissing me,
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him, 150
Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,
And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.


O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O warblings under the sun--usher'd, as now, or at noon, or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither!
I take to your reckless and composite chords--I add to them, and


cheerfully pass them forward.

As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in
the briers, hatching her brood. 160

I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and
joyfully singing.

And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was
not there only,


Nor for his mate, nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.


Democracy!


Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully
singing.

Ma femme!

For the brood beyond us and of us, 170

For those who belong here, and those to come,

I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger
and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way,

And your songs, outlaw'd offenders--for I scan you with kindred eyes,
and carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,

To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward,
and is not dropt by death.

I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all--and I will be the
bard of personality;

And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of
the other;

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me--for I am
determin'd to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove
you illustrious;

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present--and can
be none in the future; 180

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody, it may be turn'd to
beautiful results--and I will show that nothing can happen more
beautiful than death;

And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,

And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as
profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts;

But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts with
reference to ensemble:

And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to
all days;

And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has
reference to the Soul;

(Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the
Soul.)


Was somebody asking to see the Soul? 190

See! your own shape and countenance--persons, substances, beasts, the
trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real body ever die, and be buried?

Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,

Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and
pass to fitting spheres,

Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
moment of death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the
meaning, the main concern,

Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and
life, return in the body and the Soul,

Indifferently before death and after death.

Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern--and
includes and is the Soul; 200

Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
of it.

Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.

Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?


Toward the male of The States, and toward the female of The States,
Live words--words to the lands.

O the lands! interlink'd, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple
and grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of
those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus! 210

Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest
Colorado winds!

Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and
Connecticut!

Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!

Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!

Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd!

The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the
inexperienced sisters! 220


Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the
compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate
include you all with perfect love!

I cannot be discharged from you! not from one, any sooner than
another!

O Death! O for all that, I am yet of you, unseen, this hour, with
irrepressible love,

Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,

Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on
Paumanok's sands,

Crossing the prairies--dwelling again in Chicago--dwelling in every
town,

Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,

Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls, 230

Of and through The States, as during life--each man and woman my
neighbor,

The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him
and her,

The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me--and I yet with any of
them;

Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river--yet in my house of
adobie,

Yet returning eastward--yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,

Yet Kanadian, cheerily braving the winter--the snow and ice welcome
to me,

Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State, or of the
Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;

Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same--yet welcoming every
new brother;

Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they
unite with the old ones;

Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal-coming
personally to you now; 240

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

With me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on.

For your life, adhere to me!

Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;

I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself
really to you--but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?

No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. 250



On my way a moment I pause;

Here for you! and here for America!

Still the Present I raise aloft--Still the Future of The States I
harbinge, glad and sublime;

And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red
aborigines.

The red aborigines!

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds
and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names;

Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,
Kaqueta, Oronoco,

Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla;

Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart, charging the
water and the land with names.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth, 260

Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;

A world primal again--Vistas of glory, incessant and branching;

A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far--with new
contests,

New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These! my voice announcing--I will sleep no more, but arise;

You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless,
stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

See! steamers steaming through my poems!

See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing;

See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the
flatboat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the
backwoods village;

See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern
Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their
own shores. 270

See, pastures and forests in my poems--See, animals, wild and tame-See,
beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on
short curly grass;

See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce;

See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press--See, the electric
telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western
Sea to Manhattan;

See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching-pulses
of Europe, duly return'd;

See, the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing
the steam-whistle;

See, ploughmen, ploughing farms--See, miners, digging mines--See, the
numberless factories;


See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools--See from among
them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in
working dresses;

See, lounging through the shops and fields of The States, me, wellbelov'd,
close-held by day and night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.

O Camerado close! 280
O you and me at last--and us two only.


O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something extatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!


O now I triumph--and you shall also;
O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!
O to haste, firm holding--to haste, haste on with me.

Still, Though The One I Sing

STILL, though the one I sing,

(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,

I leave in him Revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless,

indispensable fire!)

Spirit Whose Work Is Done

SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering


pressing;)
Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric
spirit!
That with muttering voice, through the war now closed, like a
tireless phantom flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the
drum;
--Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,

reverberates round me;
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles;
While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders; 10
While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the

distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,
Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left,
Evenly, lightly rising and falling, as the steps keep time;
--Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death

next day;
Touch my mouth, ere you depart--press my lips close!
Leave me your pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with


currents convulsive!
Let them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone;
Let them identify you to the future, in these songs.

Sparkles From The Wheel

WHERE the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching--I pause aside with
them.

By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging,
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife;
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone--by foot and knee,
With measur'd tread, he turns rapidly--As he presses with light but


firm hand,
Forth issue, then, in copious golden jets,
Sparkles from the wheel.


The scene, and all its belongings--how they seize and affect me!
The sad, sharp-chinn'd old man, with worn clothes, and broad
shoulder-band of leather; 10
Myself, effusing and fluid--a phantom curiously floating--now here
absorb'd and arrested;

The group, (an unminded point, set in a vast surrounding;)
The attentive, quiet children--the loud, proud, restive base of the


streets;
The low, hoarse purr of the whirling stone--the light-press'd blade,
Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,
Sparkles from the wheel.

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.

Souvenirs Of Democracy

THE business man, the acquirer vast,
After assiduous years, surveying results, preparing for departure,
Devises houses and lands to his children--bequeaths stocks, goods-


funds for a school or hospital,
Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems

and gold;
Parceling out with care--And then, to prevent all cavil,
His name to his testament formally signs.


But I, my life surveying,
With nothing to show, to devise, from its idle years,
Nor houses, nor lands--nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,
Only these Souvenirs of Democracy--In them--in all my songs--behind


me leaving, 10
To You, who ever you are, (bathing, leavening this leaf especially
with my breath--pressing on it a moment with my own hands;
--Here! feel how the pulse beats in my wrists!--how my heart's-blood

is swelling, contracting!)
I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you,
To which I sign my name.

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 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!