Walt Whitman
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Title: The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman
Author: Walt Whitman
Release Date: December 11, 2008 [EBook #27494]
Language: English
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errors have been changed without notice. A few typographical errors
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and listed at the end of this book.
America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all
alike, endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair,
enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom,
Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in
the adamant of Time.
THE PATRIOTIC POEMS
OF
WALT WHITMAN
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign
languages,
including the Scandinavian
COPYRIGHT
1855, 1856, 1860, 1867
1871, 1876, 1881, 1882, 1883,
1884, 1888, 1891
BY WALT WHITMAN
COPYRIGHT
1897
BY RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE
THOMAS B. HARNED AND HORACE L. TRAUBEL
LITERARY
EXECUTORS OF WALT WHITMAN
COPYRIGHT
1902
BY THOMAS B. HARNED AND HORACE L. TRAUBEL
SURVIVING LITERARY
EXECUTORS OF WALT WHITMAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This little volume of poems, selected from the complete edition
published by us, is issued with the approval of the Whitman Executors,
T. B. Harned and Horace Traubel, holders of the copyright. With one
exception each poem here printed is complete.
The Publishers.
PAGE
|
America
|
ii
|
|
|
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I. POEMS OF WAR
|
Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
|
3
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Beat! Beat! Drums!
|
4
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City of Ships
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6
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A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
|
7
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Come Up From the Fields Father
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9
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A Twilight Song
|
12
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A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
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14
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Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me
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16
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First O Songs for a Prelude
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17
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Song of the Banner at Daybreak
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21
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The Dying Veteran
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31
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The Wound-Dresser
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32
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Dirge for Two Veterans
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37
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From Far Dakota's Cañons
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39
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Old War-Dreams
|
41
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Delicate Cluster
|
42
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To a Certain Civilian
|
43
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Adieu to a Soldier
|
44
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Long, Too Long America
|
45
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|
|
|
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II. POEMS OF AFTER-WAR
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Weave In, My Hardy Life
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49
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How Solemn as One by One
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50
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Spirit Whose Work Is Done
|
51
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The Return of the Heroes
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53
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Memories of President Lincoln
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When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
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62
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O Captain! My Captain!
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76
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Hush'd be the Camps To-day
|
78
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Ashes of Soldiers
|
79
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Pensive on her Dead Gazing
|
82
|
|
|
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III. POEMS OF AMERICA
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I Hear America Singing
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87
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Pioneers! O Pioneers!
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88
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Song of the Broad-axe
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95
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Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
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113
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Faces
|
116
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O Magnet-South
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118
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By Broad Potomac's Shore
|
121
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Our Old Feuillage!
|
122
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A Broadway Pageant
|
131
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The Prairie States
|
137
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|
|
|
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IV. POEMS OF DEMOCRACY
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To Foreign Lands
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141
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To Thee Old Cause
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142
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For You O Democracy
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143
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Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
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144
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What Best I See in Thee
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153
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As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
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154
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The United States to Old World Critics
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156
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Years of the Modern
|
157
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O Star of France
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158
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Thoughts
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161
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By Blue Ontario's Shore
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164
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|
|
|
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Epilogue: Rise O Days from Your
Fathomless Deeps
|
191
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I
POEMS OF WAR
[Pg 3]
THICK-SPRINKLED BUNTING
Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!
Long yet
your road, fateful flag—long yet your road, and lined with bloody
death,
For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,
All
its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner;
Dream'd
again the flags of kings, highest borne, to flaunt unrival'd?
O
hasten flag of man—O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags
of kings,
Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol—run up above
them all,
Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!
[Pg 4]
BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through
the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into
the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school
where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no
happiness must he have now with his bride,
Not the peaceful farmer
any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce
you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over
the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are
beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must
sleep in those beds,
No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or
speculators—would they
continue?
Would the talkers be
talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in
the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker,
heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make
no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind
not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young
man,
Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's
entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie
awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud
you bugles blow.
[Pg 6]
CITY OF SHIPS
City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce
ships!
O the beautiful sharp-bow'd steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City
of the world! (for all races are here,
All the lands of the earth
make contributions here);
City of the sea! city of hurried and
glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or
recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam!
City of wharves
and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud
and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring
up O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
Fear
not—submit to no models but your own, O city!
Behold
me—incarnate me as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offer'd me—whom you
adopted I have adopted,
Good or bad I never question you—I love
all—I do not condemn anything,
I chant and celebrate all that
is yours—yet peace no more,
In peace I chanted peace, but now
the drum of war is mine,
War, red war is my song through your
streets, O city!
[Pg 7]
A MARCH IN THE RANKS HARD-PREST, AND THE ROAD UNKNOWN
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A
route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
Our
army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
Till
after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,
We
come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted
building,
'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an
impromptu hospital,
Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond
all the pictures and poems ever made,
Shadows of deepest, deepest
black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great
pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,
By
these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the
pews laid down,
At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad,
in danger of bleeding to death (he is shot in the abdomen),
I
stanch the blood temporarily (the youngster's face is white as a lily),
Then
before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene fain to absorb it all,
Faces,
varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of
them dead,
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell
of ether, the odour of blood,
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody
forms, the yard outside also fill'd,
Some on the bare ground, some
on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,
An
occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls,
The
glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the
torches,
These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell
the odour,
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men,
fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a
half-smile gives he me,
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I
speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness
marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.
[Pg 9]
COME UP FROM THE FIELDS FATHER
Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from
our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from
thy dear son.
Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper
green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with
leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the
orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd vines
(Smell you the
smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the
bees were lately buzzing?),
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so
transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too,
all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.
Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from
the fields come father, come at the daughter's call,
And come to
the entry mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her
steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust
her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's
writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our
dear son, O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes,
flashes with black, she catches the main words only,
Sentences
broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to
hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming
and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the
face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown
daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around
speechless and dismay'd),
See, dearest mother, the letter says
Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better (nor may be
needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),
While they stand
at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin
form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at
night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking,
weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw
unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to
seek, to be with her dear dead son.
[Pg 12]
A TWILIGHT SONG
As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering
oak-flame,
Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes—of the countless buried
unknown soldiers,
Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and
sea's—the unreturn'd,
The brief truce after battle, with grim
burial-squads, and the deep-fill'd trenches
Of gather'd dead from
all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up,
From
wooded Maine, New-England's farms, from fertile Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Ohio,
From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the
Carolinas, Texas
(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in
the noiseless flickering flames,
Again I see the stalwart ranks
on-filing, rising—I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies);
You
million unwrit names all, all—you dark bequest from all the war,
A
special verse for you—a flash of duty long neglected—your mystic roll
strangely gather'd here,
Each name recall'd by me from out the
darkness and death's ashes,
Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my
heart recording, for many a future year,
Your mystic roll entire of
unknown names, or North or South,
Embalm'd with love in this
twilight song.
[Pg 14]
A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND DIM
A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As
from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the
cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I
see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,
Over
each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,
Gray and
heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light
fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket;
Who
are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and
flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—and who are you my child
and darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very
calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know
you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,
Dead
and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
[Pg 16]
YEAR THAT TREMBLED AND REEL'D BENEATH ME
Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your
summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
A
thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me,
Must I
change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn
to chant the cold dirges of the baffled,
And sullen hymns of defeat?
[Pg 17]
FIRST O SONGS FOR A PRELUDE
First O songs for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the
stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my city,
How she led the rest
to arms, how she gave the cue,
How at once with lithe limbs
unwaiting a moment she sprang,
(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my
peerless.
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer
than steel!)
How you sprang—how you threw off the costumes of peace
with indifferent hand,
How your soft opera-music changed, and the
drum and fife were heard in
their stead,
How you led to the war
(that shall serve for our prelude, songs of
soldiers),
How
Manhattan drum-taps led.
Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
Forty
years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and
turbulent city,
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her
incalculable wealth,
With her million children around her, suddenly,
At
dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens'd struck with
clinch'd hand the pavement.
A shock electric, the night sustain'd it,
Till
with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads.
From
the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
Leapt
they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.
To the drum-taps prompt,
The young men falling in
and arming,
The mechanics arming (the trowel, the jack-plane, the
blacksmith's hammer, tost aside with precipitation),
The lawyer
leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,
The
driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the
reins abruptly down on the horses' backs,
The salesman leaving the
store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;
Squads gather
everywhere by common consent and arm,
The new recruits, even boys,
the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements, they buckle the
straps carefully,
Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the
musket-barrels,
The white tents cluster in camps, the arm'd
sentries around, the sunrise cannon and again at sunset,
Arm'd
regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the
wharves
(How good they look as they tramp down to the river,
sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders!
How I love them! how I
could hug them, with their brown faces and their clothes and knapsacks
cover'd with dust!)
The blood of the city up—arm'd! arm'd! the cry
everywhere,
The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and
from all the public buildings and stores,
The tearful parting, the
mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother
(Loth is the
mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him),
The
tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,
The
unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites,
The
artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble
lightly over the stones
(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,
Soon
unlimber'd to begin the red business);
All the mutter of
preparation, all the determin'd arming,
The hospital service, the
lint, bandages, and medicines,
The women volunteering for nurses,
the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now;
War! an arm'd
race is advancing, the welcome for battle, no turning away;
War! be
it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing to welcome it.
Mannahatta a-march—and it's O to sing it well!
It's
O for a manly life in the camp.
And the sturdy artillery
The guns bright as gold,
the work for giants, to serve well the guns,
Unlimber them! (No
more as the past forty years for salutes for courtesies merely,
Put
in something now besides powder and wadding.)
And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,
Old matron
of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,
Often in peace and wealth
you were pensive or covertly frown'd amid all your children,
But
now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.
[Pg 21]
SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK
Poet
O a new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping,
flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind's
voice and that of the drum,
By the banner's voice and the child's
voice and sea's voice and father's voice,
Low on the ground and
high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
In
the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the banner at daybreak
is flapping.
Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more,
for hearken and see,
My song is there in the open air, and I must
sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire
and babe's desire, I'll twine them in, I'll put in life,
I'll put
the bayonet's flashing point, I'll let bullets and slugs whizz
(As
one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,
Crying with
trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)
I'll
pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,
Then
loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,
With the banner and
pennant a-flapping.
Pennant
Come up here, bard, bard,
Come up here, soul, soul,
Come
up here, dear little child,
To fly in the clouds and winds with me,
and play with the measureless light.
Child
Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with
long finger?
And what does it say to me all the while?
Father
Nothing my babe you see in the sky,
And nothing at
all to you it says—but look you my babe,
Look at these
dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening,
And
see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;
These,
ah these, how valued and toil'd for these!
How envied by all the
earth!
Poet
Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,
On
floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,
On
floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
The
great steady wind from west to west-by-south.
Floating so buoyant
with milk-white foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea nor the
red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the
immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the
spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am
that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in
brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in
the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the
hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and
flapping.
Child
O father it is alive—it is full of people—it has
children,
O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,
I
hear it—it talks to me—O it is wonderful!
O it
stretches—it spreads and runs so fast—O my father,
It
is so broad it covers the whole sky.
Father
Cease, cease, my foolish babe,
What you are saying
is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;
Behold with the rest
again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,
But the
well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall'd houses.
Banner and Pennant
Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,
To our
children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Point this day,
leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know not why,
For
what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,
Only flapping
in the wind?
Poet
I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,
I hear
the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,
I hear the
jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!
I hear the
drums beat and the trumpets blowing,
I myself move abroad
swift-rising flying then,
I use the wings of the land-bird and use
the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height,
I do not
deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities with wealth
incalculable,
I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in
their fields or barns,
I see mechanics working, I see buildings
everywhere founded, going up, or finish'd,
I see trains of cars
swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives,
I
see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,
I
see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering,
I
pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern
plantation, and again to California;
Sweeping the whole I see the
countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn'd wages,
See the
Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States (and
many more to come),
See forts on the shores of harbours, see ships
sailing in and out;
Then over all (aye! aye!) my little and
lengthen'd pennant shaped like a sword,
Runs swiftly up indicating
war and defiance—and now the halyards have rais'd it,
Side of
my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,
Discarding
peace over all the sea and land.
Banner and Pennant
Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther,
wider cleave!
No longer let our children deem us riches and peace
alone,
We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,
Not now are
we any one of these spacious and haughty States (nor any five, nor
ten),
Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,
But
these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below,
are ours,
And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great
and small,
And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the
fruits are ours,
Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are
ours—while we over all,
Over the area spread below, the three
or four millions of square miles, the capitals,
The forty millions
of people—O bard! in life and death supreme,
We, even we,
henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,
Not for the present
alone, for a thousand years chanting through you,
This song to the
soul of one poor little child.
Child
O my father I like not the houses,
They will never
to me be anything, nor do I like money,
But to mount up there I
would like, O father dear, that banner I like,
That pennant I would
be and must be.
Father
Child of mine you fill me with anguish,
To be that
pennant would be too fearful,
Little you know what it is this day,
and after this day, forever,
It is to gain nothing, but risk
and defy everything,
Forward to stand in front of
wars—and O, such wars!—what have you to do with them?
With
passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
Banner
Demons and death then I sing,
Put in all, aye all
will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,
And a pleasure new and
ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,
Blent with the
sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,
And the
black ships fighting on the sea envelop'd in smoke,
And the icy
cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,
And the
whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun
shining south,
And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my
Eastern shore, and my Western shore the same,
And all between those
shores, and my ever running Mississippi with bends and chutes,
And
my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri,
The
Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom,
Pour
in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all,
Fusing
and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,
No more with tender
lip, nor musical labial sound,
But out of the night emerging for
food, our voice persuasive no more,
Croaking like crows here in the
wind.
Poet
My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,
Banner
so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute,
I
burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen'd and blinded,
My
hearing and tongue are come to me (a little child taught me),
I
hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,
Insensate!
insensate (yet I at any rate chant you), O banner!
Not houses of
peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity (if need be,
you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them.
You
thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of
comfort, built with money,
May they stand fast, then? not an hour
except you above them and all stand fast);
O banner, not money so
precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good
nutriment,
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the
ships,
Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power,
fetching and carrying cargoes,
Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor
revenues—but you as henceforth I see you,
Running up out of
the night, bringing your cluster of stars (ever-enlarging stars),
Divider
of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun, measuring the
sky,
(Passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child,
While
others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift,
thrift);
O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake
hissing so curious,
Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously
fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me,
So loved—O you
banner leading the day with stars brought from the night!
Valueless,
object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute owner of all)—O
banner and pennant!
I too leave the rest!—great as it is, it is
nothing—houses, machines are nothing—I see them not.
I
see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I
sing you only,
Flapping up there in the wind.
[Pg 31]
THE DYING VETERAN
(A Long Island incident—early part of the nineteenth century.)
Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,
Amid
the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,
I cast a
reminiscence—(likely 't will offend you,
I heard it in my
boyhood)—More than a generation since,
A queer old savage
man, a fighter under Washington himself
(Large, brave, cleanly,
hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic,
Had fought in the
ranks—fought well—had been all through the Revolutionary war),
Lay
dying—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,
Sharping
their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words:
"Let
me return again to my war-days,
To the sights and scenes—to forming
the line of battle,
To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,
To the
cannons, the grim artillery,
To the galloping aids, carrying orders,
To
the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,
The perfume
strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;
Away with your life of
peace!—your joys of peace!
Give me my old wild battle-life
again!"
[Pg 32]
THE WOUND-DRESSER
1
An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years
looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old
man, as from young men and maidens that love me
(Arous'd and angry,
I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
But soon
my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd myself,
To sit
by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead);
Years
hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of
unsurpass'd heroes (was one side so brave? the other was equally
brave);
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,
Of
those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
What
stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of
hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
2
O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What
you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier
alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with sweat and dust,
In
the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush
of successful charge,
Enter the captur'd works—yet lo, like a
swift-running river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell
not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys
(Both I remember
well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content).
But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the
world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is
over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With
hinged knees returning I enter the doors (while for you up there,
Whoever
you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart).
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight
and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after
the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the
grass, the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under
the roof'd hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side
I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do
I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse
pail,
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and
fill'd again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady
hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet
unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never
knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for
you, if that would save you.
3
On, on I go (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The
crush'd head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away),
The
neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,
Hard
the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life
struggles hard,
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!
In
mercy come quickly).
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I
undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and
blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and
side-falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares
not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look'd on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
But a day
or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the
yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the
bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene,
so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside
me holding the tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur'd
thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress
with impassive hand (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame).
4
Thus in silence in dreams' projections,
Returning,
resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and
wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the
dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the
experience sweet and sad
(Many a soldier's loving arms about this
neck have cross'd and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these
bearded lips).
[Pg 37]
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
The last sunbeam
Lightly
falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there
beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double
grave
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up
from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the
house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense
and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And
I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of
the city streets they're flooding,
As with
voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And
the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great
convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and
through.
For the son is brought with the father
(In
the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans,
son and father, dropt together,
And the
double grave awaits them).
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And
the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight over the
pavement quite has faded,
And the strong
dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The
sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd
('Tis some mother's large
transparent face,
In heaven brighter
growing).
O strong dead-march you please me!
O
moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers
twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What
I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And
the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my
soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you
love.
[Pg 39]
FROM FAR DAKOTA'S CAÑONS
June 25, 1876.
From far Dakota's cañons,
Lands of the wild
ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply
to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.
The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the
craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the
last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with
their slaughter'd horses for breastworks,
The fall of Custer and
all his officers and men.
Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The
loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly
maintain'd,
O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!
As sitting in dark days,
Lone, sulky, through the
time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope,
From
unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof
(The sun there at
the centre though conceal'd,
Electric life forever at the centre),
Breaks
forth a lightning flash.
Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,
I
erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a
bright sword in thy hand,
Now ending well in death the splendid
fever of thy deeds
(I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad
triumphal sonnet),
Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most
desperate, most glorious,
After thy many battles in which never
yielding up a gun or a colour,
Leaving behind thee a memory sweet
to soldiers,
Thou yieldest up thyself.
[Pg 41]
OLD WAR-DREAMS
In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of
the look at first of the mortally wounded (of that indescribable look),
Of
the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
I
dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
Of
skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly
bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches
and gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I
dream.
Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields,
Where
through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the
fallen,
Onward I sped at the time—but now of their forms at night,
I
dream, I dream, I dream.
[Pg 42]
DELICATE CLUSTER
Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering
all my lands—all my seashores lining!
Flag of death! (how I
watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you
flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the
orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty—ah my woolly white and
crimson!
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred
one, my mother!
[Pg 43]
TO A CERTAIN CIVILIAN
Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you seek
the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes?
Did you find what I
sang erewhile so hard to follow?
Why I was not singing erewhile for
you to follow, to understand—nor am I now;
(I have been born
of the same as the war was born,
The drum-corps' rattle is ever to
me sweet music, I love well the martial dirge,
With slow wail and
convulsive throb leading the officer's funeral);
What to such as
you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,
And go lull
yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,
For I
lull nobody, and you will never understand me.
[Pg 44]
ADIEU TO A SOLDIER
Adieu O soldier,
You of the rude campaigning
(which we shared),
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The
hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,
Red battles
with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game,
Spell
of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and like
of you all fill'd,
With war and war's expression.
Adieu dear comrade,
Your mission is fulfill'd—but
I, more warlike,
Myself and this contentious soul of mine,
Still
on our own campaigning bound,
Through untried roads with ambushes
opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis,
often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye
here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
[Pg 45]
LONG, TOO LONG AMERICA
Long, too long America,
Travelling roads all even
and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah
now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst
fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world
what your children en-masse really are.
(For who except myself has
yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?).
II
POEMS OF AFTER-WAR
[Pg 49]
WEAVE IN, MY HARDY LIFE
Weave in, weave in, my hardy life,
Weave yet a
soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come,
Weave in red
blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight weave in,
Weave
lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp, incessant weave,
tire not
(We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the
end, nor really aught we know,
But know the work, the need goes on
and shall go on, the death-envelop'd march of peace as well as war
goes on),
For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to
weave,
We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.
[Pg 50]
HOW SOLEMN AS ONE BY ONE
(Washington City, 1865)
How solemn as one by one,
As the ranks returning
worn and sweaty, as the men file by where I stand,
As the faces the
masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the masks
(As I
glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend, whoever you
are),
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the
ranks, and to you!
I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred
soul,
O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear
friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
The soul!
yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting secure and
content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab O
friend.
[Pg 51]
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE
(Washington City, 1865)
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,
As the muskets of
the young men yet lean over their shoulders,
As I look on the
bayonets bristling over their shoulders,
As 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 while 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.
[Pg 53]
THE RETURN OF THE HEROES
1
For the lands and for these passionate days and for
myself,
Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,
Reclining
on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy
sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee.
O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,
O
harvest of my lands—O boundless summer growths,
O lavish
brown parturient earth—O infinite teeming womb,
A song to
narrate thee.
2
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God's calm annual
drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise that
fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the
waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the
stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The liliput countless
armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless
pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,
The
stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the
silvery fringes,
The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning
stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The
shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.
3
Fecund America—to-day,
Thou art all over set
in births and joys!
Thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes
thee as a swathing garment,
Thou laughest loud with ache of great
possessions,
A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all
thy vast demesne,
As some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou
ridest into port,
As rain falls from the heaven and vapours rise
from the earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee and risen
out of thee;
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed,
choked, swimming in plenty,
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil
barns,
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out
upon thy world, and lookest East and lookest West,
Dispensatress,
that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million farms, and missest
nothing,
Thou all-acceptress—thou hospitable (thou only art
hospitable as God is hospitable).
4
When late I sang sad was my voice,
Sad were the
shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war;
In
the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,
Or pass'd with slow
step through the wounded and dying.
But now I sing not war,
Nor the measur'd march of
soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
Nor the regiments hastily coming
up deploying in line of battle;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of
war.
Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first
forth-stepping armies?
Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies
dread that follow'd.
(Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping
sinewy legs,
With your shoulders young and strong, with your
knapsacks and your muskets;
How elate I stood and watch'd you,
where starting off you march'd.
Pass—then rattle drums again,
For an army
heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
Swarming, trailing on
the rear, O you dread accruing army,
O you regiments so piteous,
with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever,
O my land's maim'd
darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch,
Lo,
your pallid army follows.)
5
But on these days of brightness,
On the
far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the
high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
Should the dead
intrude?
Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,
They
fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,
And along
the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.
Nor do I forget you Departed,
Nor in winter or
summer my lost ones,
But most in the open air as now when my soul
is rapt and at peace, like pleasing phantoms,
Your memories rising
glide silently by me.
6
I saw the day the return of the heroes,
(Yet the heroes never
surpass'd shall never return,
Them that day I saw not).
I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,
I
saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,
Streaming
northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty
camps.
No holiday soldiers—youthful, yet veterans,
Worn,
swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden'd
of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
Inured on many a
hard-fought bloody field.
A pause—the armies wait,
A million flush'd
embattled conquerors wait,
The world too waits, then soft as
breaking night and sure as dawn,
They melt, they disappear.
Exult O lands! victorious lands!
Not there your
victory on those red shuddering fields,
But here and hence your
victory.
Melt, melt away ye armies—disperse ye blue-clad
soldiers,
Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,
Other
the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North,
With
saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.
7
Loud O my throat, and clear O soul!
The season of
thanks and the voice of full-yielding,
The chant of joy and power
for boundless fertility.
All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me,
I
see the true arenas of my race, or first or last,
Man's innocent
and strong arenas.
I see the heroes at other toils,
I see
well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.
I see where the Mother of All,
With full-spanning
eye gazes forth, dwells long,
And counts the varied gathering of
the products.
Busy the far, the sunlit panorama,
Prairie,
orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
Cotton and rice of the
South and Louisianian cane,
Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of
clover and timothy,
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep
and swine,
And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,
And
healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,
And the good green
grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass.
Toil on heroes! harvest the products!
Not alone on
those warlike fields the Mother of All,
With dilated form and
lambent eyes watch'd you.
Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well!
The
Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.
Well-pleased America thou beholdest,
Over the
fields of the West those crawling monsters,
The human-divine
inventions, the labour-saving implements;
Beholdest moving in every
direction imbued as with life the revolving hay-rakes,
The
steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines,
The
engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well separating the
straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,
Beholdest the newer
saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser.
Beneath thy look O Maternal,
With these and else
and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest.
All gather and all harvest,
Yet but for thee O
Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security,
Not a
maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.
Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay
under thy great face only,
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois,
Wisconsin, every barbed spear under thee,
Harvest the maize of
Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in its light-green sheath,
Gather
the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,
Oats to
their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
Gather
the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the golden the
sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of
California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or
hemp or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull
apples from the trees or bunches of grapes from the vines,
Or aught
that ripens in all these States or North or South,
Under the
beaming sun and under thee.
[Pg 62]
MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM'D
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the
great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I
mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac
blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of
him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of
night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd—O the
black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me
powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud
that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the
white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with
heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom
rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a
miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With
delicate-colour'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A
sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and
hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to
himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song
of life (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to
sing thou would'st surely die).
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid
lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the
ground, spotting the gray débris,
Amid the grass in the fields
each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the
yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown
fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in
the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night
and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening
the land,
With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities
draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of
crape-veil'd women standing,
With processions long and winding and
the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with
the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting
depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges
through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With
all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin,
The
dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you
journey,
With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here,
coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches
green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would
I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you
over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that
blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the
bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and
the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what
you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,
As I walk'd in
silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something
to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you dropp'd from
the sky low down as if to my side (while the other stars all look'd
on),
As we wander'd together the solemn night (for something I know
not what kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced, and I saw on
the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the
rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I
watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the
night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you
sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and
tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come
presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the
lustrous star has detain'd me,
The star my departing comrade holds
and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I
loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that
has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the
Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies
meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll
perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what
shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the
burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With
the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With
floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under
foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
In the
distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with
many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with
dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of
life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land,
My own
Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the
ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the
light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the
far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The
violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born
measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd
noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over
my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
Sing from
the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
Limitless
out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud
human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to
my soul—O wondrous singer!
You only I hear—yet the star holds
me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odour holds
me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,
In
the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the
farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of
my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty
(after the perturb'd winds and the storms),
Under the arching
heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and
women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they
sail'd,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields
all busy with labour,
And the infinite separate houses, how they
all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And
the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—lo,
then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all,
enveloping me with the rest,
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long
black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred
knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side
of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And
I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of
companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks
not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the
dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,
The
gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three,
And he sang the
carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant
cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as
if by their hands my comrades in the night,
And the voice of my
spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate
round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in
the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For
life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for
love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the
sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have
none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I
chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a
song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is
so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost
in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of
thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances
for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And
the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And
life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The
ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And
the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,
And
the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over
the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies
wide,
Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming
wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to
thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up
the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling
the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the
freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there
in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As
to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless
dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the
battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither
and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a
few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs
all splinter'd and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the
white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the débris and
débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they
were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they
suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And
the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the
armies that remain'd suffer'd.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing,
unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the
hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song,
death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and
wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly
sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting
with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As
that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I
leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in
the dooryard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on
thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade
lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the
night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And
the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,
With the lustrous
and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the
holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine
and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I
loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird
twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and
the cedars dusk and dim.
[Pg 76]
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The
ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port
is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow
eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But
O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops
of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen
cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise
up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For
you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For
you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here
Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your
head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've
fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and
still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The
ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From
fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult
O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with
mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain
lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
[Pg 78]
HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4, 1865)
Hush'd be the camps to-day,
And soldiers let us
drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to
celebrate,
Our dear commander's death.
No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor
victory, nor defeat—no more time's dark events,
Charging like
ceaseless clouds across the sky.
But sing poet in our name,
Sing of the love we
bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing—as they
close the doors of earth upon him—one verse,
For the heavy
hearts of soldiers.
[Pg 79]
ASHES OF SOLDIERS
Ashes of soldiers South or North,
As I muse
retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,
The war resumes, again
to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of the armies.
Noiseless as mists and vapours,
From their graves
in the trenches ascending,
From cemeteries all through Virginia and
Tennessee,
From every point of the compass out of the countless
graves,
In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or
threes or single ones they come,
And silently gather round me.
Now sound no note O trumpeters,
Not at the head of
my cavalry parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and
glistening, and carbines by their thighs (ah my brave horsemen!
My
handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
With
all the perils were yours).
Nor you drummers, neither at reveillé at dawn,
Nor
the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for a
burial,
Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike
drums.
But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the
crowded promenade,
Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the
rest and voiceless,
The slain elate and alive again, the dust and
débris alive,
I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name
of all dead soldiers.
Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather
closer yet,
Draw close, but speak not.
Phantoms of countless lost,
Invisible to the rest
henceforth become my companions,
Follow me ever—desert me not while
I live.
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living—sweet are
the musical voices sounding,
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with
their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,
But
love is not over—and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from
battlefields rising, up from the foetor arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
Give
me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
Shroud them, embalm
them, cover them all over with tender pride.
Perfume all—make all wholesome,
Make these
ashes to nourish and blossom,
O love, solve all, fructify all with
the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,
That I
exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,
For
the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.
[Pg 82]
PENSIVE ON HER DEAD GAZING
Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,
Desperate
on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing
(As
the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger'd),
As
she call'd to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk'd,
Absorb
them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my sons, lose
not an atom,
And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear
blood,
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly
impalpable,
And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my
rivers' depths,
And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear
children's blood trickling redden'd,
And you trees down in your
roots to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb or South or
North—my young men's bodies absorb, and their precious, precious blood,
Which
holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year
hence,
In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries
hence,
In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my
darlings, give my immortal heroes,
Exhale me them centuries hence,
breathe me their breath, let not an atom be lost,
O years and
graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
Exhale them
perennial sweet death, years centuries hence.
III
POEMS OF AMERICA
[Pg 87]
I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those
of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The
carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason
singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The
boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing
on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his
bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the
ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at
sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife
at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what
belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the
day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing
with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
[Pg 88]
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
Come my tan-faced children,
Follow
well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have
you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We
must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger
We the
youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths,
So
impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain
I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do
they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We
take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We
debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong
the world we seize, world of labour and the march,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down
the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering,
holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
We primeval forests felling,
We
the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We
the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Colorado men are we,
From
the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From
the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central
inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood
intervein'd,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern,
all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless restless race!
O
beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O
I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving
high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend your
heads all),
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern,
impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
See my children, resolute children,
By
those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back
in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
On and on the compact ranks,
With
accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through
the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
O to die advancing on!
Are
there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the
march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
All the pulses of the world,
Falling
in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single
or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All
the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen
and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
All the hapless silent lovers,
All
the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All
the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
I too with my soul and body,
We,
a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores
amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo,
the brother orbs around, all the clustering sun and planets,
All
the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
These are of us, they are with us,
All
for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait
behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel
clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you daughters of the West!
O
you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never
must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded
bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work)
Soon I
hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet,
Not
the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious
Not
the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do
the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still
be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was
the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our
way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause
oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far,
far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift!
to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
[Pg 95]
SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE
1
Weapon shapely, naked, wan,
Head from the mother's
bowels drawn,
Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip
only one,
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a
little seed sown
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean'd
and to lean on.
Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes,
masculine trades, sights and sounds,
Long varied train of an
emblem, dabs of music,
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato
over the keys of the great organ.
2
Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,
Welcome
are lands of pine and oak,
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,
Welcome
are lands of gold,
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome
those of the grape,
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,
Welcome
the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato,
Welcome
are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,
Welcome the rich
borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,
Welcome the measureless
grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp;
Welcome
just as much the other more hard-faced lands,
Lands rich as lands
of gold or wheat and fruit lands,
Lands of mines, lands of the
manly and rugged ores,
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,
Lands
of iron—lands of the make of the axe.
3
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,
The
sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd for a garden,
The
irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull'd,
The
wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
The
thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends, and
the cutting away of masts,
The sentiment of the huge timbers of
old-fashion'd houses and barns,
The remember'd print or narrative,
the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,
The
disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
The voyage of those who
sought a New England and found it, the outset anywhere,
The
settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow
progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty
of all adventurous and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and
wood-men with their clear untrimm'd faces,
The beauty of
independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
The
American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless
impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling
through random types, the solidification;
The butcher in the
slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman,
the pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods,
stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
The
glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life
of the woods, the strong day's work,
The blazing fire at night, the
sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock-boughs, and the
bear-skin;
The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
The
preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
The hoist-up of
beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular,
Setting
the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they were
prepared,
The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the
men, their curv'd limbs,
Bending, standing, astride the beams,
driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces,
The hook'd arm
over the plate, the other arm wieldingthe axe,
The floor-men
forcing the planks close to be nail'd,
Their postures bringing
their weapons downward on the bearers,
The echoes resounding
through the vacant building;
The huge storehouse carried up in the
city well under way,
The six framing-men, two in the middle and two
at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a
cross-beam,
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right
hands rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front
to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click
of the trowels striking the bricks,
The bricks one after another
each laid so workman-like in its place, and set with a knock of the
trowel-handle,
The piles of materials, the mortar on the
mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men;
Spar-makers
in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,
The
swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the
shape of a mast,
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven
slantingly into the pine,
The butter-colour'd chips flying off in
great flakes and slivers,
The limber motion of brawny young arms
and hips in easy costumes,
The constructor of wharves, bridges,
piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea;
The city fireman,
the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack'd square,
The
arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
The
strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the
rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic,
blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders and
their execution,
The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or
through floors if the fire smoulders under them,
The crowd with
their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;
The forger
at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,
The maker of
the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
The chooser
breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his
thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in
the socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past
users also,
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and
engineers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The
Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior
with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on
the helmeted head,
The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the
rush of friend and foe thither,
The siege of revolted lieges
determin'd for liberty,
The summons to surrender, the battering at
castle gates, the truce and parley,
The sack of an old city in its
time.
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and
disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
Goods
freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe
of brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old
persons despairing,
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
The
list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,
The power of
personality just or unjust.
4
Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life
invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living
advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
For
the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but
personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think a great
city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared
constitution? or the best built steamships?
Or hotels of granite
and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?
Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,
They
fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
The
show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well
till one flash of defiance.
A great city is that which has the greatest men and
women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in
the whole world.
5
The place where a great city stands is not the place
of stretch'd wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor
the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of
the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings
or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of
the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest,
Nor
the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of
orators and bards,
Where the city stands that is belov'd by these,
and loves them in return and understands them,
Where no monuments
exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
Where thrift is
in its place, and prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women
think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master
of slaves ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the
never-ending audacity of elected persons,
Where fierce men and
women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping
and unript waves,
Where outside authority enters always after the
precedence of inside authority,
Where the citizen is always the
head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor and what not, are
agents for pay,
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves,
and to depend on themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in
affairs,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where
women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
Where
they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
Where
the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
Where the city of the
cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest
fathers stands,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
There
the great city stands.
6
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
How
the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or
woman's look!
All waits or goes by default till a strong being
appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability
of the universe,
When he or she appears materials are overaw'd,
The
dispute on the soul stops,
The old customs and phrases are
confronted, turn'd back, or laid away.
What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
What
is your respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition,
society, traditions, statute-books, now?
Where are your jibes of
being now?
Where are your cavils about the soul now?
7
A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good
as the best for all the forbidding appearance,
There is the mine,
there are the miners,
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is
accomplish'd, the hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
What
always served and always serves is at hand.
Than this nothing has better served, it has served
all,
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long
ere the Greek,
Served in building the buildings that last longer
than any,
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient
Hindustanee,
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served
those whose relics remain in Central America,
Served Albic temples
in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and the druids,
Served
the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover'd hills
of Scandinavia,
Served those who time out of mind made on the
granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean
waves,
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the
pastoral tribes and nomads,
Served the long distant Kelt, served
the hardy pirates of the Baltic,
Served before any of those the
venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,
Served the making of helms
for the galleys of pleasure and the making of those for war,
Served
all great works on land and all great works on the sea,
For the
mediæval ages and before the mediæval ages,
Served not
the living only then as now, but served the dead.
8
I see the European headsman,
He stands mask'd,
clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,
And leans on
a ponderous axe.
(Whom have you slaughter'd lately European headsman?
Whose
is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)
I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
I see from
the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords,
uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers, rejected kings,
Rivals,
traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.
I see those who in any land have died for the good
cause,
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out
(Mind
you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out).
I see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe,
Both
blade and helve are clean,
They spirt no more the blood of European
nobles, they clasp no more the necks of queens.
I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,
I
see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,
I
see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race, the
newest, largest race.
9
(America! I do not vaunt my love for you,
I have
what I have.)
The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid
utterances,
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent,
landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle,
rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling,
saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
Cornice,
trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake,
pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge,
rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box,
chest, string'd instrument, boat frame, and what not,
Capitols of
States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in
avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick,
Manhattan
steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes
anyhow, and the users and all that neighbours them,
Cutters down of
wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,
Dwellers in
cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little lakes, or on
the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio
Grande, friendly gatherings, the characters and fun,
Dwellers along
the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by the Yellowstone,
dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic
seamen breaking passages through the ice.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals,
foundries, markets,
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,
Shapes
of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,
Shapes
of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,
Ship-yards
and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in many a bay
and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the
hackmatack-roots for knees,
The ships themselves on their ways, the
tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside,
The tools
lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line,
square, gouge, and bead-plane.
10
The shapes arise!
The shape measur'd, saw'd,
jack'd, join'd, stain'd,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie
within in his shroud,
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead
posts, in the posts of the bride's bed,
The shape of the little
trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's
cradle,
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for
dancers' feet,
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home
of the friendly parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the
home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-married
young man and woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cook'd by
the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content
after his day's work.
The shapes arise!
The shape of the prisoner's
place in the court-room, and of him or her seated in the place,
The
shape of the liquor-bar lean'd against by the young rum-drinker and
the old rum-drinker,
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod
by sneaking footsteps,
The shape of the sly settee, and the
adulterous unwholesome couple,
The shape of the gambling-board with
its devilish winnings and losings,
The shape of the step-ladder for
the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face
and pinion'd arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the
silent and white-lipp'd crowd, the dangling of the rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many
exits and entrances,
The door passing the dissever'd friend flush'd
and in haste,
The door that admits good news and bad news,
The
door whence the son left home confident and puff'd up,
The door he
enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence, diseas'd, broken
down, without innocence, without means.
11
Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet
more guarded than ever,
The gross and soil'd she moves among do not
make her gross and soil'd,
She knows the thoughts as she passes,
nothing is conceal'd from her,
She is none the less considerate or
friendly therefor,
She is the best belov'd, it is without
exception, she has no reason to fear and she does not fear,
Oaths,
quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she
passes,
She is silent, she is possess'd of herself, they do not
offend her,
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them,
she is strong,
She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger
than she is.
12
The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy total,
result of centuries,
Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
Shapes
of turbulent manly cities,
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of
the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole
earth.
[Pg 113]
GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT SUN
1
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams
full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the
orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me
an arbour, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and
wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,
Give me
nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi,
and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden
of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd,
Give me for
marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,
Give
me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a
rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by
myself, for my own ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature,
give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
These demanding to
have them (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack'd by the
war-strife),
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries
from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my
city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where
you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up,
Yet
giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever faces
(O
I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
I
see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for).
2
Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods, O
Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of
clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the
blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me
faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and endless along
the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me
comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every
day—let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such
shows—give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway,
with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the trumpets and drums!
(The
soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away, flushed and
reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young,
yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing)
Give me the shores
and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an
intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the
theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer!
the crowded excursion for me! the torchlight procession!
The dense
brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People,
endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan
streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
The
endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets (even the
sight of the wounded),
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent
musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
[Pg 116]
FACES
The old face of the mother of many children,
Whist!
I am fully content.
Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
It
hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
It hangs thin by
the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them.
I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
I
heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in
crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.
Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap,
her face is clearer and more beautiful
than the sky.
She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the
farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her
grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the
distaff and the wheel.
The melodious character of the earth,
The finish
beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go,
The
justified mother of men.
[Pg 118]
O MAGNET-SOUTH
O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! my South!
O
quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all dear
to me!
O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things and the trees
where I was born—the grains, plants, rivers,
Dear to me my
own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of
silvery sands or through swamps,
Dear to me the Roanoke, the
Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the
Coosa, and the Sabine,
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with
my soul to haunt their banks again,
Again in Florida I float on
transparent lakes, I float on the Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land
or through pleasant openings or dense forests,
I see the parrots in
the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the blossoming titi;
Again,
sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up the
Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the
yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress,
the graceful palmetto,
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico
sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton
plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
The cactus guarded
with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,
The range
afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged with
mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odour and the gloom, the
awful natural stillness (here in these dense swamps the freebooter
carries his gun, and the fugitive has his conceal'd hut);
O the
strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable swamps,
infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the
sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the
rattlesnake,
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the
forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the
wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Kentucky corn-field, the
tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn, slender, flapping, bright green,
with tassels, with beautiful ears each well-sheath'd in its husk;
O
my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will
depart;
O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O
longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and never
wander more.
[Pg 121]
BY BROAD POTOMAC'S SHORE
By broad Potomac's shore, again old tongue
(Still
uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?)
Again
old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush spring
returning,
Again the freshness and the odours, again Virginia's
summer sky, pellucid blue and silver,
Again the forenoon purple of
the hills,
Again
the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green,
Again the
blood-red roses blooming.
Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses!
Lave
subtly with your waters every line Potomac!
Give me of you O
spring, before I close, to put between its pages!
O forenoon purple
of the hills, before I close, of you!
O deathless grass, of you!
[Pg 122]
OUR OLD FEUILLAGE!
Always our old feuillage!
Always Florida's green
peninsula—always the priceless delta of Louisiana—always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,
Always California's golden
hills and hollows, and the silver mountains of New Mexico—always
soft-breath'd Cuba,
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern
sea, inseparable with the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western
seas,
The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and
a half millions of square miles,
The eighteen thousand miles of
sea-coast and bay-coast on the main, the thirty thousand miles of
river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families and the
same number of dwellings—always these, and more, branching forth into
numberless branches,
Always the free range and diversity—always the
continent of Democracy;
Always the prairies, pastures, forests,
vast cities, travellers, Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact
lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes;
Always
the West with strong native persons, the increasing density there, the
habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
All
sights, South, North, East—all deeds promiscuously done at all times,
All
characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through
Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering,
On interior
rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up,
Sunlight
by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the
Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware,
In
their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the
hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink,
In a lonesome inlet
a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the water rocking silently,
In
farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done, they
rest standing, they are too tired,
Afar on arctic ice the
she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around,
The hawk
sailing where men have not yet sail'd, the farthest polar sea, ripply,
crystalline, open, beyond the floes,
White drift spooning ahead
where the ship in the tempest dashes,
On solid land what is done in
cities as the bells strike midnight together,
In primitive woods
the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the wolf, the scream of
the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk,
In winter beneath
the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer visible through the
clear waters, the great trout swimming,
In lower latitudes in
warmer air in the Carolinas the large black buzzard floating slowly
high beyond the tree tops,
Below, the red cedar festoon'd with
tylandria, the pines and cypresses growing out of the white sand that
spreads far and flat,
Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing
plants, parasites with colour'd flowers and berries enveloping huge
trees,
The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,
noiselessly waved by the wind,
The camp of Georgia wagoners just
after dark, the supper-fires and the cooking and eating by whites and
negroes,
Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses,
feeding from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of
the old sycamore-trees, the flames with the black smoke from the
pitch-pine curling and rising;
Southern fishermen fishing, the
sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the
herring-fishery, the large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore
work'd by horses, the clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
Deep in
the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the incisions in
the trees, there are the turpentine works,
There are the negroes at
work in good health, the ground in all directions is cover'd with pine
straw;
In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at
the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking,
In
Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully
welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,
On rivers boatmen
safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks,
Some
of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle, others
sit on the gunwale smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon the
mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp,
There
are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the
cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;
Northward, young men of
Mannahatta, the target company from an excursion returning home at
evening, the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by
women;
Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen
asleep (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!),
The scout
riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi, he
ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;
California life, the
miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume, the stanch California
friendship, the sweet air, the graves one in passing meets solitary
just aside the horse-path;
Down in Texas the cotton-field, the
negro-cabins, drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton
bales piled on banks and wharves;
Encircling all, vast-darting up
and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres, one Love, one
Dilation or Pride;
In arrière the peace-talk with the Iroquois the
aborigines, the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and
indorsement,
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and
then toward the earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with
painted faces and guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the
war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file, the
swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter of enemies;
All the
acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States, reminiscences,
institutions,
All these States compact, every square mile of these
States without excepting a particle;
Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes
and country fields, Paumanok's fields,
Observing the spiral flight
of two little yellow butterflies shuffling between each other,
ascending high in the air,
The darting swallow, the destroyer of
insects, the fall traveller southward but returning northward early in
the spring,
The country boy at the close of the day driving the
herd of cows and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the
roadside,
The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco,
The departing ships when
the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening—me in my room—the setting
sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the
swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the
room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on
the opposite wall where the shine is;
The athletic American matron
speaking in public to crowds of listeners,
Males, females,
immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the
States, each for itself—the money-makers,
Factories,
machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all
certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
In
space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm
earth, the lands, my lands,
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are
(whatever it is), I putting it at random in these songs, become a part
of that, whatever it is,
Southward there, I screaming, with wings
slow flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of
Florida,
Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio
Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the
Saskatchewan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and
skipping and running,
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay
of Paumanok, I with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek
worms and aquatic plants,
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the
king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement—and I
triumphantly twittering,
The migrating flock of wild geese
alighting in autumn to refresh themselves, the body of the flock feed,
the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are
from time to time reliev'd by other sentinels—and I feeding and taking
turns with the rest,
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox,
corner'd by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging
with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—and I, plunging at
the hunters, corner'd and desperate,
In the Mannahatta, streets,
piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in
the shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less
in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
Singing the
song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no more inevitable united,
part to part, and made out of a thousand diverse contributions one
identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united and made One
identity;
Nativities, climates, the grass
of the great pastoral Plains,
Cities, labours, death, animals,
products, war, good and evil—these me,
These affording, in
all their particulars, the old feuillage to me and to America, how can
I do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like
to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves,
that you also be eligible as I am?
How can I but as here chanting,
invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable
feuillage of these States?
[Pg 131]
A BROADWAY PAGEANT
1
Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
Courteous,
the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open
barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.
Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I
behold,
In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the
errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in
the ranks marching,
But I will sing you a song of what I behold
Libertad.
When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her
pavements,
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud
roar I love,
When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell
I love spit their salutes,
When the fire-flashing guns have fully
alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,
When
gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves,
thicken with colours,
When every ship richly drest carries her flag
at the peak,
When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the
windows,
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and
foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
When the façades of the
houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands
at a time,
When the guests from the islands advance, when the
pageant moves forward visible,
When the summons is made, when the
answer that waited thousands of years answers,
I too arising,
answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze
with them.
2
Superb-faced Manhattan!
Comrade Americanos! to us,
then at last the Orient comes.
To us, my city,
Where our tall-topt marble and
iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between,
To-day
our Antipodes comes.
The Originatress comes,
The nest of languages, the
bequeather of poems, the race of eld,
Florid with blood, pensive,
rapt with musings, hot with passion,
Sultry with perfume, with
ample and flowing garments,
With sunburnt visage, with intense soul
and glittering eyes,
The race of Brahma comes.
See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us
from the procession,
As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it
moves changing before us.
For not the envoys nor the tann'd Japanee from his
island only,
Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic
continent itself appears, the past, the dead,
The murky
night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,
The envelop'd
mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
The north, the sweltering
south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients,
Vast
desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in
the pageant-procession.
Geography, the world, is in it,
The Great Sea, the
brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,
The coast you
henceforth are facing—you Libertad! from your Western golden shores,
The
countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are
curiously here,
The swarming market-places, the temples with idols
ranged along the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,
Mandarin,
farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,
The singing-girl and the
dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors,
Confucius
himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all,
Trooping
up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,
From
Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,
From
the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from
Malaysia,
These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to
me, and are seiz'd by me,
And I am seiz'd by them, and friendlily
held by them,
Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for
themselves and for you.
For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this
pageant,
I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,
I
chant the world on my Western sea,
I chant copious the islands
beyond, thick as stars in the sky,
I chant the new empire grander
than any before, as in a vision it comes to me,
I chant America the
mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,
I chant projected a thousand
blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea-islands,
My
sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,
My stars
and stripes fluttering in the wind,
Commerce opening, the sleep of
ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh'd,
Lives, works
resumed—the object I know not—but the old, the Asiatic renew'd as it
must be,
Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.
3
And you Libertad of the world!
You shall sit in
the middle well-pois'd thousands and thousands of years,
As to-day
from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,
As to-morrow from the
other side the queen of England sends her eldest son to you.
The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,
The
ring is circled, the journey is done,
The box-lid is but
perceptibly open'd, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of
the whole box.
Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the
all-mother,
Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for
you are all,
Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now
sending messages over the archipelagoes to you,
Bend your proud
neck low for once, young Libertad.
Were the children straying westward so long? so wide
the tramping?
Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from
Paradise so long?
Were the centuries steadily footing it that way,
all the while unknown, for you, for reasons?
They are justified, they are accomplish'd, they shall
now be turn'd the other way also, to travel toward you thence,
They
shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.
[Pg 137]
THE PRAIRIE STATES
A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense,
joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron
interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world
contributed—freedom's and law's and thrift's society,
The
crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations,
To
justify the past.
IV
POEMS OF DEMOCRACY
[Pg 141]
TO FOREIGN LANDS
I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this
puzzle the New World,
And to define America, her athletic Democracy,
Therefore
I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.
[Pg 142]
TO THEE OLD CAUSE
To thee old cause!
Thou peerless, passionate, good
cause,
Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,
Deathless throughout
the ages, races, lands,
After a strange sad war, great war for thee
(I
think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really
fought, for thee),
These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.
(A war O soldiers not for itself alone,
Far, far
more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)
Thou orb of many orbs!
Thou seething principle!
thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!
Around the idea of thee
the war revolving,
With all its angry and vehement play of causes
(With
vast results to come for thrice a thousand years),
These
recitatives for thee,—my book and the war are one,
Merged in
its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,
As a wheel on
its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,
Around the idea of
thee.
[Pg 143]
FOR YOU O DEMOCRACY
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I
will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will
make divine magnetic lands,
With the love
of comrades,
With the life-long love of
comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all
the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and
all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their
arms about each other's necks,
By the love
of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma
femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these
songs.
[Pg 144]
THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD
1
Thou Mother with thy equal brood,
Thou varied
chain of different States, yet one identity only,
A special song
before I go I'd sing o'er all the rest,
For thee, the future.
I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,
I'd
fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,
I'd show away ahead
thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd.
The paths to the house I seek to make,
But leave
to those to come the house itself.
Belief I sing, and preparation;
As Life and Nature
are not great with reference to the present only,
But greater still
from what is yet to come,
Out of that formula for thee I sing.
2
As a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the
amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think
of thee America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee.
The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring
thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor
rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor
library;
But an odour I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine,
or breath of an Illinois prairie,
With open airs of Virginia or
Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or Florida's glades,
Or
the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,
With
presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite,
And murmuring
under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound,
That
endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.
And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread
Mother,
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee,
mind-formulas fitted for thee, real and sane and large as these and
thee,
Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou
transcendental Union!
By thee fact to be justified, blended with
thought,
Thought of man justified, blended with God,
Through thy
idea, lo, the immortal reality!
Through thy reality, lo, the
immortal idea!
3
Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,
To
formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,
Out
of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art
(Recast,
maybe discard them, end them—maybe their work is done, who knows?),
By
vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the
dead,
To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.
And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead,
the Old World brain,
Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe
within its folds so long,
Thou carefully prepared by it so
long—haply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it,
It to
eventuate in thee—the essence of the bygone time contain'd in thee,
Its
poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with
reference to thee;
Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,
The
fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.
4
Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,
Of value
is thy freight, 'tis not the Present only,
The Past is also stored
in thee,
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the
Western continent alone,
Earth's résumé entire
floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time
voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,
With
all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou
bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the
destination-port triumphant;
Steer then with good strong hand and
wary eye O helmsman, thou carriest great companions,
Venerable
priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal feudal Europe
sails with thee.
5
Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to
my eyes,
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,
Emblem
of general maternity lifted above all,
Sacred shape of the bearer
of daughters and sons,
Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in
ceaseless procession issuing,
Acceding from such gestation, taking
and giving continual strength and life,
World of the real—world of
the twain in one,
World of the soul, born by the world of the real
alone, led to identity, body, by it alone,
Yet in beginning only,
incalculable masses of composite precious materials,
By history's
cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent,
Ready,
collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here
(The
true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to
come),
Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I
define thee,
How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?
I
feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,
I watch thee
advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past,
I see thy
light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe,
But
I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee,
I but
thee name, thee prophesy, as now,
I merely thee ejaculate!
Thee in thy future,
Thee in thy only permanent
life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit,
Thee as
another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying
all,
Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great
hilarity,
Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that
weigh'd so long upon the mind of man,
The doubt, suspicion, dread,
of gradual, certain decadence of man;
Thee in thy larger, saner
brood of female, male—thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South,
North, West, East,
(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy
every daughter, son, endear'd alike, forever equal),
Thee in thy
own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain,
Thee in
thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest material
civilization must remain in vain),
Thee in thy all-supplying,
all-enclosing worship—thee in no single bible, saviour, merely,
Thy
saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within
thyself, equal to any, divine as any
(Thy soaring course thee
formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century's visible
growth,
But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great
Mother!),
Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies,
students, born of thee,
Thee in thy democratic fêtes en-masse, thy
high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers,
Thee in thy
ultimata (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure
foundations tied),
Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy
topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration,
In thy
resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal
bards, kosmic savans,
These! these in thee (certain to come),
to-day I prophesy.
6
Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good
alone, all good for thee,
Land in the realms of God to be a realm
unto thyself,
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.
(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,
To be thy
natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,
Set in the
sky of Law.)
Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith,
Thy
soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd,
The general inner earth so
long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid
bare,
Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale.
Not for success alone,
Not to fair-sail
unintermitted always,
The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of
war and worse than war shall cover thee all over
(Wert capable of
war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials,
For the
tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not
war);
In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee,
thou in disease shalt swelter,
The livid cancer spread its hideous
claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,
Consumption
of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic,
But
thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all,
Whatever
they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,
They each
and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,
While thou,
Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating,
fusing,
Equable, natural, mystical Union thou (the mortal with
immortal blent),
Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future,
the spirit of the body and the mind,
The soul, its destinies.
The soul, its destinies, the real real
(Purport
of all these apparitions of the real);
In thee
America, the soul, its destinies,
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder
nebulous!
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd (by these
thyself solidifying),
Thou mental, moral orb—thou New, indeed new,
Spiritual World!
The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as
thine,
For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine,
The
Future only holds
thee and can hold thee.
[Pg 153]
WHAT BEST I SEE IN THEE
To U. S. G. return'd from his World's Tour.
What best I see in thee
Is not that where thou
mov'st down history's great highways,
Ever undimm'd by time shoots
warlike victory's dazzle,
Or that thou sat'st where Washington sat, ruling the
land in peace,
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe fêted, venerable
Asia swarm'd upon
Who walk'd with kings with even pace the round
world's promenade;
But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with
kings,
Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri,
Illinois,
Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers,
all to the front,
Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even
pace the round world's promenade,
Were all so justified.
[Pg 154]
AS I WALK THESE BROAD MAJESTIC DAYS
As I walk these broad majestic days of peace
(For
the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against
vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet
perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in
still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises,
labours beyond all others),
Around me I hear that éclat of the
world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things,
science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
I see the ships (they will last a few years),
The
vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the
indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships,
politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand
procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving,
and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it
should be.
Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad
and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the
earth,
The rapt promises and luminè of seers, the spiritual world,
these centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of
poets, the most solid announcements of any.
[Pg 156]
THE UNITED STATES TO OLD WORLD CRITICS
Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the
concrete,
Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;
As
of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,
Whence to
arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,
The
solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.
[Pg 157]
YEARS OF THE MODERN
Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your
horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,
I see
not America only, not only Liberty's nation but other nations
preparing,
I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations,
the solidarity of races,
The earth, restive, confronts a new era,
perhaps a general divine war,
No one knows what will happen next,
such portents fill the days and nights;
Years prophetical! the
space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of
phantoms,
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes
around me,
This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic
fever of dreams O years!
Your dreams O years, how they penetrate
through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake.)
The perform'd
America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
The
unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.
[Pg 158]
O STAR OF FRANCE
1870-71
O star of France,
The brightness of thy hope and
strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems
to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk,
And 'mid its
teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman.
Dim smitten star,
Orb not of France alone, pale
symbol of my soul its dearest hopes,
The struggle and the daring,
rage divine for liberty,
Of aspirations toward the far ideal,
enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood,
Of terror to the tyrant and the
priest.
Star crucified—by traitors sold,
Star
panting o'er a land of death, heroic land,
Strange, passionate,
mocking, frivolous land.
Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will
not now rebuke thee,
Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd
them all,
And left thee sacred.
In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly,
In
that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price,
In
that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep,
In that
alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that
shamed thee,
In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual
chains,
This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,
The
spear thrust in thy side.
O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!
Bear
up O smitten orb! O ship continue on!
Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,
Product
of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,
Forth from its spasms of fury
and its poisons,
Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,
Onward
beneath the sun following its course,
So thee O ship of France!
Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd,
The
travail o'er, the long-sought extrication,
When lo! reborn, high
o'er the European world,
(In gladness answering thence, as face
afar to face, reflecting ours Columbia),
Again thy star O France,
fair lustrous star,
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than
ever,
Shall beam immortal.
[Pg 161]
THOUGHTS
1
Of these years I sing,
How they pass and have
pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through parturitions,
How
America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure
fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people—illustrates evil
as well as good,
The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in
one's-self;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed,
caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,
How few see
the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom
or spirituality, or hold any faith in results
(But I see the
athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable,
and they again leading to other results).
How the great cities appear—how the Democratic
masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them,
How the whirl, the
contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sound and resounding, keep
on and on,
How society waits unform'd, and is for a while between
things ended and things begun,
How America is the continent of
glories, and of the triumph of freedom and of the Democracies, and of
the fruits of society, and of all that is begun,
And how the States
are complete in themselves—and how all triumphs and glories are
complete in themselves, to lead onward,
And how these of mine and
of the States will in turn be convuls'd, and serve other parturitions
and transitions,
And how all people, sights, combinations, the
Democratic masses too, serve—and how every fact, and war itself, with
all its horrors, serves, And how now or at any
time each serves the exquisite transition of death.
2
Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,
Of
the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to impregnable
and swarming places,
Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the
rest, are to be,
Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska,
Colorado, Nevada, and the rest
(Or afar, mounting the Northern
Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska),
Of what the feuillage of America is
the preparation for—and of what all sights, North, South, East and
West, are,
Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid,
of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind;
Of the temporary use
of materials for identity's sake,
Of the present, passing,
departing—of the growth of completer men than any yet,
Of all
sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the
Mississippi flows,
Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and
unsuspected,
Of the new and good names, of the modern developments,
of inalienable homesteads,
Of a free and original life there, of
simple diet and clean and sweet blood,
Of litheness, majestic
faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,
Of immense spiritual
results future years far West, each side of the Anahuacs,
Of these
songs, well understood there (being made for that area),
Of the
native scorn of grossness and gain there
(O it lurks in me night
and day—what is gain after all to savageness and freedom?).
[Pg 164]
BY BLUE ONTARIO'S SHORE
1
By blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these
warlike days and of peace return'd, and the dead that return no more,
A
Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,
Chant me
the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America, chant
me the carol of victory,
And strike up the marches of
Libertad, marches more powerful yet,
And sing me before you go the
song of the throes of Democracy.
(Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous
lip-smiles everywhere,
And death and infidelity at every step.)
2
A Nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only
growth by which I can be appreciated,
I reject none, accept all,
then reproduce all in my own forms.
A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,
What we
are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,
We wield
ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
We are powerful and tremendous in
ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the
variety of ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in
ourselves,
We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence
over the world,
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing
attacks to scorn.
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever
appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in
ourselves only.
(O Mother—O Sisters dear!
If we are lost, no
victor else has destroy'd us,
It is by ourselves we go down to
eternal night.)
3
Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
There
can be any number of supremes—one does not countervail another any
more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails
another.
All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals,
all is for you,
No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.
All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport
with the universe.
Produce great Persons, the rest follows.
4
Piety and conformity to them that like,
Peace,
obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
I am he who tauntingly
compels men, women, nations,
Crying, Leap from your seats and
contend for your lives!
I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue,
questioning every one I meet,
Who are you that wanted only to be
told what you knew before?
Who are you that wanted only a book to
join you in your nonsense?
(With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many
children,
These clamours wild to a race of pride I give.)
O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever
been before?
If you would be freer than all that has been before,
come listen to me.
Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,
Fear
the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey juice,
Beware the advancing
mortal ripening of Nature,
Beware what precedes the decay of the
ruggedness of states and men.
5
Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating
undirected materials,
America brings builders, and brings its own
styles.
The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their
work and pass'd to other spheres,
A work remains, the work of
surpassing all they have done.
America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by
its own at all hazards,
Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound,
initiates the true use of precedents,
Does not repel them or the
past or what they have produced under their forms,
Takes the lesson
with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,
Perceives
that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its
days,
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped
heir who approaches,
And that he shall be fittest for his days.
Any period one nation must lead,
One land must be
the promise and reliance of the future.
These States are the amplest poem,
Here is not
merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,
Here the doings of
men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,
Here
is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,
Here
are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
Here
the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul
loves.
6
Land of lands and bards to corroborate!
Of them
standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face,
To
him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's,
His
first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,
Built of the
common stock, having room for far and near,
Used to dispense with
other lands, incarnating this land,
Attracting it body and soul to
himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,
Plunging his
seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,
Making its cities,
beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,
Making its
rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
Mississippi with yearly
freshets and hanging chutes, Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending
themselves lovingly in him,
If the Atlantic coast stretch or the
Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them North or South,
Spanning
between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them,
Growths
growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock,
live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia,
Tangles
as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp,
He likening sides and
peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,
Off
him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,
Through
him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk,
mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,
His spirit surrounding his
country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil,
Surrounding the
essences of real things, old times and present times,
Surrounding
just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
Weather-beaten
vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,
The
haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of the
Constitution,
The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the
immigrants,
The Union always swarming with blatherers and always
sure and impregnable,
The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses,
clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers,
Surrounding the
multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
Congress
convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the
uttermost parts,
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and
farmers, especially the young men,
Responding their manners,
speech, dress, friendships, the gait they have of persons who never
knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors,
The
freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and
decision of their phrenology,
The picturesque looseness of their
carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd,
The fluency of their
speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good temper and
open-handdedness, the whole composite make,
The prevailing ardour
and enterprise, the large amativeness,
The perfect equality of the
female with the male, the fluid movement of the population,
The
superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
Wharf-hemm'd
cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points,
Factories,
mercantile life, labour-saving machinery, the Northeast, Northwest,
Southwest,
Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation
life,
Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it
upon the ruins of all the rest,
On and on to the grapple with
it—Assassin! then your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more.
7
(Lo, high toward heaven, this day,
Libertad, from
the conqueress' field return'd,
I mark the new aureola around your
head,
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
With
war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing,
And your port
immovable where you stand,
With still the inextinguishable glance
and the clinch'd and lifted fist,
And your foot on the neck of the
menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you,
The menacing
arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn,
bearing the murderous knife,
The wide-swelling one, the braggart
that would yesterday do so much,
To-day a carrion dead and damn'd,
the despised of all the earth,
An offal rank, to the dunghill
maggots spurn'd.)
8
Others take finish, but the Republic is ever
constructive and ever keeps vista,
Others adorn the past, but you O
days of the present, I adorn you,
O days of the future I believe in
you—I isolate myself for your sake,
O America because you
build for mankind I build for you,
O well-beloved stone-cutters, I
lead them who plan with decision and science,
Lead the present with
friendly hand toward the future.
(Bravas to all impulses sending
sane children to the next age!
But damn that which spends itself
with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is
bequeathing.)
9
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,
I
heard the voice arising demanding bards,
By them all native and
grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact
organism of a nation.
To hold men together by paper and seal or by
compulsion is no account,
That only holds men together which
aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the
body or the fibres of plants.
Of all races and eras these States with veins full of
poetical stuff most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use
them the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common
referee so much as their poets shall.
(Soul of love and tongue of fire:
Eye to pierce
the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
Ah Mother, prolific and full
in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)
10
Of these States the poet is the equable man,
Not
in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their
full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its
place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit
proportion, neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the
diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He
supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
In
peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty
building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,
In
war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
The
years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
He
is no arguer, he is judgment (Nature accepts him absolutely),
He
judges not as the judges but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,
As
he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the
hymns of the praise of things,
In the dispute on God and eternity
he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and
dénouement,
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see
men and women as dreams or dots.
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free
individuals,
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
The
attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.
Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is
Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women
(Not
for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready
to fall for Liberty).
11
For the great Idea,
That, O my brethren, that is
the mission of poets.
Songs of stern defiance ever ready,
Songs of the
rapid arming and the march,
The flag of peace quick-folded, and
instead the flag we know,
Warlike flag of the great Idea.
(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
I stand again in
leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,
I sing you over all,
flying beckoning through the fight—O the hard-contested fight!
The
cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles—the hurtled balls scream,
The
battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour incessant from the
line,
Hark, the ringing word Charge!—now the tussle and the
furious maddening yells,
Now the corpses tumble curl'd upon the
ground,
Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,
Angry
cloth I saw there leaping.)
12
Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a
poet here in the States?
The place is august, the terms obdurate.
Who would assume to teach here may well prepare
himself body and mind,
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify,
harden, make lithe himself,
He shall surely be question'd
beforehand by me with many and stern questions.
Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?
Have
you studied out the land, its idioms and men?
Have you learn'd the
physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom,
friendship of the land? its substratums and objects?
Have you
consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the first year of
Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners, ratified by the States, and
read by Washington at the head of the army?
Have you possess'd
yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and
poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
Are
you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies
of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
Have you sped
through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand
against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you
very strong? are you really of the whole People?
Are you not of
some coterie? some school or mere religion?
Are you done with
reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself?
Have
you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
Have you
too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
Do you hold
the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the last-born?
little and big? and for the errant?
What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform
with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or
done before?
Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some
ship?
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?—is the good old
cause in it?
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets,
politicians, literats, of enemies' lands?
Does it not assume that
what is notoriously gone is still here?
Does it answer universal
needs? will it improve manners?
Does it sound with trumpet-voice
the proud victory of the Union in that secession war?
Can your
performance face the open fields and the seaside?
Will it absorb
into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait,
face?
Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not
mere amanuenses?
Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts,
face to face?
What does it mean to American persons, progresses,
cities? Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas?
Does it see behind the apparent
custodians the real custodians standing, menacing, silent, the
mechanics, Manhattanese, Western men, Southerners, significant alike
in their apathy, and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see
what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each
temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has
ever ask'd any thing of America?
What mocking and scornful
negligence?
The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons,
By the
roadside others disdainfully toss'd.
13
Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from
poems pass away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and
leave ashes,
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the
soil of literature,
America justifies itself, give it time, no
disguise can deceive it or conceal from it, it is impassive enough,
Only
toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,
If its
poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there is no
fear of mistake
(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till
his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it).
He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest
who results sweetest in the long run,
The blood of the brawn
beloved of time is unconstraint;
In the need of songs, philosophy,
an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, any craft,
He or she
is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example.
Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging,
appears on the streets,
People's lips salute only doers, lovers,
satisfiers, positive knowers,
There will shortly be no more
priests, I say their work is done,
Death is without emergencies
here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,
Are your body, days,
manners, superb? after death you shall be superb,
Justice, health,
self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power,
How dare you
place any thing before a man?
14
Fall behind me States!
A man before all—myself,
typical, before all.
Give me the pay I have served for,
Give to sing
the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the
earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given alms to
every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my
income and labour to others,
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning
God, had patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat
to nothing known or unknown,
Gone freely with powerful uneducated
persons and with the young, and with the mothers of families,
Read
these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, stars,
rivers,
Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
Claim'd
nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for others on the
same terms,
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from
every State
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to
breathe his last,
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd,
rais'd, restored,
To life recalling many a prostrate form);
I am
willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,
Rejecting
none, permitting all.
(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been
faithful?
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)
15
I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It
is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am
great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one,
It is to walk
rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,
Through
poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.
Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is
good to me now that ignores individuals,
The American compact is
altogether with individuals,
The only government is that which
makes minute of individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is
directed unerringly to one single individual—namely to You.
(Mother! with subtle sense severe, with the naked
sword in your hand,
I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly
with individuals.)
16
Underneath all, Nativity,
I swear I will stand by
my own nativity, pious or impious so be it;
I swear I am charm'd
with nothing except nativity.
Men, women, cities, nations, are only
beautiful from nativity.
Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and
women
(I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of
expressing love for men and women,
After this day I take my own
modes of expressing love for men and women).
I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself
(Talk
as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favour the
audacity and sublime turbulence of the States).
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature,
governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
Underneath
all to me is myself, to you yourself (the same monotonous old song).
17
O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,
Its
power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,
Its crimes, lies,
thefts, defections, are you and me,
Its Congress is you and me, the
officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me,
Its endless
gestations of new States are you and me,
The war (that war so
bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth forget) was you and me,
Natural
and artificial are you and me,
Freedom, language, forms,
employments, are you and me,
Past, present, future, are you and me.
I dare not shirk any part of myself,
Not any part
of America good or bad,
Not to build for that which builds for
mankind,
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
Not
to justify science nor the march of equality,
Nor to feed the
arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time.
I am for those that have never been master'd,
For
men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,
For those
whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
Who
inaugurate one to inaugurate all.
I will not be outfaced by irrational things,
I
will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
I will
make cities and civilizations defer to me,
This is what I have
learnt from America—it is the amount, and it I teach again.
(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim'd at
your breast,
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children,
saw in dreams
your
dilating form,
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)
18
I will confront these shows of the day and night,
I
will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as
majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I
will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I
have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning,
I will
see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am
not to be enough for myself.
I match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths,
mountains, brutes,
Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself,
and become the master myself,
America isolated yet embodying all,
what is it finally except myself?
These States, what are they
except myself?
I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing,
wicked, it is for my sake,
I take you specially to be mine, you
terrible, rude forms.
(Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,
I
know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,
I know
not fruition's success, but I know that through war and crime your
work goes on, and must yet go on.)
19
Thus by blue Ontario's shore,
While the winds
fann'd me and the waves came trooping toward me,
I thrill'd with
the power's pulsations, and the charm of my theme was upon me,
Till
the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me.
And I saw the free souls of poets,
The loftiest
bards of past ages strode before me,
Strange large men, long
unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me.
20
O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!
Not for the
bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch'd you forth,
Not
to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario's shores,
Have I
sung so capricious and loud my savage song.
Bards for my own land only I invoke
(For the war,
the war is over, the field is clear'd),
Till they strike up marches
henceforth triumphant and onward,
To cheer O Mother your boundless
expectant soul.
Bards of the great Idea! bards of the peaceful
inventions! (for the war, the war is over!)
Yet bards of latent
armies, a million soldiers waiting ever-ready,
Bards with songs as
from burning coals or the lightning's fork'd stripes!
Ample Ohio's,
Kanada's bards—bards of California! inland bards—bards of the war!
You
by my charm I invoke.
EPILOGUE
[Pg 191]
RISE O DAYS FROM YOUR FATHOMLESS DEEPS
1
Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you
loftier, fiercer sweep,
Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I
devour'd what the earth gave me,
Long I roam'd the woods of the
north, long I watch'd Niagara pouring,
I travel'd the prairies over
and slept on their breast, I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the
plateaus
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd
out to sea,
I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm
I
watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves,
I mark'd the
white combs where they career'd so high, curling over.
I heard the
wind piping; I saw the black clouds,
Saw from below what arose and
mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!),
Heard the
continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning,
Noted the
slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and fast amid the
din they chased each other across the sky;
These, and such as
these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful,
All
the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,
Yet there with
my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.
2
'Twas well, O soul—'twas a good preparation you gave
me,
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,
Now we
go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us,
Not
through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities,
Something
for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,
Torrents of men
(sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed inexhaustible?),
What,
to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of the
mountains and sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day?
was the sea risen?
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the
black clouds?
Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more
deadly and savage,
Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing
front—Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain'd;
What was that swell I
saw on the ocean? behold what comes here,
How it climbs with daring
feet and hands—how it dashes!
How the true thunder bellows
after the lightning—how bright the flashes of lightning!
How
Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the
dark by those flashes of lightning!
(Yet a mournful wail and low
sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
In a lull of the deafening
confusion.)
3
Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with
vengeful stroke!
And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O
cities!
Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,
My
soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment,
Long
had I walk'd my cities, my country roads through farms, only half
satisfied,
One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on
the ground before me,
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon
me oft, ironically hissing low;
The cities I loved so well I
abandon'd and left, I sped to the certainties suitable to me,
Hungering,
hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature's dauntlessness,
I
refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only,
I waited the
bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited long;
But
now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,
I have
witness'd the true lightning, I have witness'd my cities electric,
I
have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,
Hence
I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
No
more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 121: "Agagin the deathless grass" changed to "
Again the deathless grass".
Page 185: "saw in dreams you" changed to "saw in dreams
your".
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman, by
Walt Whitman
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