Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God.
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonises the Pacific,
        the archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale
        engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,
        all lands;
--What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the
seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming _en masse_?--for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;
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 performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.

_FLUX._

Of these years I sing,
How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions;
How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure
        fulfilment, despite of people--Illustrates evil as well as good;
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 States--or see freedom or
        spirituality--or hold any faith in results.
But I see the athletes--and I see the results 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 sounding and
        resounding, keep on and on;
How society waits unformed, and is 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 their turn be convulsed,
        and serve other parturitions and transitions.
And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too,
        serve--and how every fact serves,
And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.

_TO WORKING MEN._

1.

Come closer to me;
Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;
Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.

This is unfinished business with me--How is it with you?
(I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)

Male and Female!
I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of
        bodies and souls.

American masses!
I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me--I
        know that it is good for you to do so.

2.

This is the poem of occupations;
In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the
        developments,
And find the eternal meanings.
Workmen and Workwomen!
Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me,
        what would it amount to?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what
        would it amount to?
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms;
A man like me, and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master am I;
I take no sooner a large price than a small price--I will have my own,
        whoever enjoys me;
I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.

If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same
        shop;
If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as
        your brother or dearest friend;
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be
        personally as welcome;
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot
        remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds?
If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table;
If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her--why I often
        meet strangers in the street, and love them.

Why, what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you then that thought yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you?
Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief,
Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;
Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw
        your name in print,
Do you give in that you are any less immortal?

3.

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable
        and untouching;
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are
        alive or no;
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and
outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see,
And all else behind or through them.

The wife--and she is not one jot less than the husband;
The daughter--and she is just as good as the son;
The mother--and she is every bit as much as the father.

Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,
Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
All these I see--but nigher and farther the same I see;
None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the
        value itself.

There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;
It is not what is printed, preached, discussed--it eludes discussion and
        print;
It is not to be put in a book--it is not in this book;
It is for you, whoever you are--it is no farther from you than your hearing
        and sight are from you;
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest--it is ever provoked by them.

You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it;
You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there;
Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or
        in the daily papers or the weekly papers,
Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of
        stock.

4.

The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it--surely the drift of them is
        something grand!
I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is
        happiness,
And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,
        or reconnoissance,
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and
        without luck must be a failure for us,
And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that
        with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and
        outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that
        fill each minute of time for ever,
What have you reckoned them for, camerado?
Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a
        store?
Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a
        lady's leisure?

Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be
        painted in a picture?
Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious
        combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the
        savans?
Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture
        itself?

Old institutions--these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the
        practice handed along in manufactures--will we rate them so high?
Will we rate our cash and business high?--I have no objection;
I rate them as high as the highest--then a child born of a woman and man I
        rate beyond all rate.

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand;
I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are;
I am this day just as much in love with them as you;
Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth.

We consider Bibles and religions divine--I do not say they are not divine;
I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;
It is not they who give the life--it is you who give the life;
Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they
        are shed out of you.

5.

When the psalm sings, instead of the singer;
When the script preaches, instead of the preacher;
When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the
        supporting desk;
When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch
        my body back again;
When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and child
        convince;
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's
        daughter;
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly
        companions;
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and
        women like you.
The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;
The President is there in the White House for you--it is not you who are
        here for him;
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you--not you here for them;
The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;
Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and
        coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.

List close, my scholars dear!
All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you;
All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied
        in you;
The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is
        in you this hour, and myths and tales the same;
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be
        vacuums.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches
        and cornices?

All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the
        instruments;
It is not the violins and the cornets--it is not the oboe nor the beating
        drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet
        romanza--nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's
        chorus,
It is nearer and farther than they.

6.

Will the whole come back then?
Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there
        nothing greater or more?
Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul?

Strange and hard that paradox true I give;
Objects gross and the unseen Soul are one.

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;
Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-
        dressing,
Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks
        by flaggers,
The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,
Coal-mines, and all that is down there,--the lamps in the darkness, echoes,
        songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through
        smutched faces,
Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks--men around
        feeling the melt with huge crowbars--lumps of ore, the due
        combining of ore, limestone, coal--the blast-furnace and the
        puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last--
        the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean
        shaped T-rail for railroads;
Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the
        great mills and factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door lintels--
        the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum,
        the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron--the kettle of boiling vault-
        cement, and the fire under the kettle,
The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the
        mould of the moulder, the working knife of the butcher, the ice-
        saw, and all the work with ice,
The implements for daguerreotyping--the tools of the rigger, grappler,
        sail-maker, block-maker,
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mâché, colours, brushes, brush-making,
        glaziers' implements,
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter and
        glasses, the shears and flat-iron,
The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and
        stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal--the making of all sorts
        of edged tools,
The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done by
        brewers, also by wine-makers, also vinegar-makers,
Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling,
        sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking--electro-plating,
        electrotyping, stereotyping,
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
        ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam waggons,
The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray;
Pyrotechny, letting off coloured fireworks at night, fancy figures and
        jets,
Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the
        butcher in his killing-clothes,
The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub,
        gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous
        winter-work of pork-packing,
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice--the barrels and the half
        and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves
        and levees,
The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats,
        canals;
The daily routine of your own or any man's life--the shop, yard, store, or
        factory;
These shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, your
        daily life!
In that and them the heft of the heaviest--in them far more than you
        estimated, and far less also;
In them realities for you and me--in them poems for you and me;
In them, not yourself--you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of
        estimation;
In them the development good--in them, all themes and hints.

I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile--I do not advise you to stop;
I do not say leadings you thought great are not great;
But I say that none lead to greater than those lead to.

7.

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,
In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place--not for another
        hour, but this hour;
Man in the first you see or touch--always in friend, brother, nighest
        neighbour--Woman in mother, sister, wife;
The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,
You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong
        life,
And all else giving place to men and women like you.

_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!
Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be leaned, 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 are 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 cleared for a garden,
The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is
        lulled,
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-fashioned houses and barns;
The remembered 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 untrimmed 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 bearskin;
--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 curved
        limbs,
Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts
        and braces,
The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed,
Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
The echoes resounding through the vacant building;
The huge store-house 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 workmanlike 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-hewed log, shaping it toward the
        shape of a mast,
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,
The butter-coloured 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-packed
        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 woodwork, 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 limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe
        thither,
The siege of revolted lieges determined 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 for ever!
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,
And 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 the 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 _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of engineering,
        forts, armaments?

Away! These are not to be cherished 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.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the
        whole world.

5.

The place where the great city stands is not the place of
        stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce,
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 beloved 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 unripped 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 faithfullest 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 overawed,
The dispute on the Soul stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned 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?

Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?
Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obediently from the path
        of one man or woman!
The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the foot-soles of one
        man or woman!

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 accomplished; the hammersmen 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 Hindostanee;
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-covered 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 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 mediaeval ages, and before the mediaeval ages;
Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.

8.

I see the European headsman;
He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,
And leans on a ponderous axe.

Whom have you slaughtered 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, uncrowned ladies, impeached 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 washed 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, shutter, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
        wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, stringed 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 up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river--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 craft, river craft.

The shapes arise!
Shipyards 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 measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained,
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 cooked 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 leaned 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 pinioned arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipped crowd,
        the sickening dangling of the rope.

The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances;
The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed and in haste;
The door that admits good news and bad news;
The door whence the son left home, confident and puffed up;
The door he entered again from a long and scandalous absence, diseased,
        broken down, without innocence, without means.

11.

Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled;
She knows the thoughts as she passes--nothing is concealed from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;
She is the best beloved--it is without exception--she has no reason to
        fear, and she does not fear;
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as
        she passes;
She is silent--she is possessed 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 a hundred Free States, begetting another hundred;
Shapes of turbulent manly cities;
Shapes of the women fit for these States,
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole earth.

_ANTECEDENTS._

1.

With antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages:
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am;
With Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,--with laws, artisanship, wars, and
        journeys;
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the sale of slaves--with enthusiasts--with the troubadour, the
        crusader, and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent;
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there;
With the fading religions and priests;
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present
        shores;
With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years;
You and Me arrived--America arrived, and making this year;
This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

2.

O but it is not the years--it is I--it is You;
We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents;
We are the skald, the oracle, the monk, and the knight--we easily include
        them, and more;
We stand amid time, beginningless and endless--we stand amid evil and good;
All swings around us--there is as much darkness as light;
The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us:
Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.

3.

As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement days;)
I have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all;
I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true--I reject no part.

Have I forgotten any part?
Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.

I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god;
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without
        exception;
I assert that all past days were what they should have been;
And that they could nohow have been better than they were,
And that to-day is what it should be--and that America is,
And that to-day and America could nohow be better than they are.

4.

In the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Past,
And in the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Present time.

I know that the past was great, and the future will be great,
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,
For the sake of him I typify--for the common average man's sake--your sake,
        if you are he;
And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the centre of
        all days, all races,
And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come of races and
        days, or ever will come.

_SALUT AU MONDE!_

1.

O take my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next!
Each answering all--each sharing the earth with all.

What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What climes? what persons and lands are here?
Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering?
Who are the girls? who are the married women?
Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about each others'
        necks?
What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists?
What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers?

2.

Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;
Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west;
Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;
Within me is the longest day--the sun wheels in slanting rings--it does not
        set for months.
Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the
        horizon, and sinks again;
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.

3.

What do you hear, Walt Whitman?

I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing;
I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the
        day;
I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky,
        hunting on hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the
        rebeck and guitar;
I hear continual echoes from the Thames;
I hear fierce French liberty songs;
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems;
I hear the Virginian plantation chorus of negroes, of a harvest night, in
        the glare of pine-knots;
I hear the strong barytone of the 'long-shore-men of Mannahatta;
I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing;
I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes;
I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and
        grass with the showers of their terrible clouds;
I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast
        of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile;
I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada;
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule;
I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque;
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches--I hear the
        responsive bass and soprano;
I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired Irish grandparents,
        when they learn the death of their grandson;
I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at
        Okotsk;
I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on--as the husky
        gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-
        chains and ankle-chains;
I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment--I hear the sibilant
        whisk of thongs through the air;
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the
        Romans;
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God,
        the Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars, adages,
        transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand
        years ago.

4.

What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

I see a great round wonder rolling through the air:
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories,
        palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the
        surface;
I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping--and the
        sun-lit part on the other side;
I see the curious silent change of the light and shade;
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land
        is to me.

I see plenteous waters;
I see mountain-peaks--I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, where
        they range;
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;
I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds;
I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps;
I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians--and to the north the Dofrafields,
        and off at sea Mount Hecla;
I see Vesuvius and Etna--I see the Anahuacs;
I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red
        Mountains of Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western America;
I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Anarctic icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones--the Atlantic and Pacific,
        the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of
        Guinea,
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay
        of Biscay,
The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,
The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,
The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the world;
Some are in storms--some in the night, with the watch on the look-out;
Some drifting helplessly--some with contagious diseases.

I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in clusters in port,
        some on their voyages;
Some double the Cape of Storms--some Cape Verde,--others Cape Guardafui,
        Bon, or Bajadore;
Others Dondra Head--others pass the Straits of Sunda--others Cape Lopatka--
        others Behring's Straits;
Others Cape Horn--others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti--others
        Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay;
Others pass the Straits of Dover--others enter the Wash--others the Firth
        of Solway--others round Cape Clear--others the Land's End;
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld;
Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook;
Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the Dardanelles;
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs;
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena:
Others the Niger or the Congo--others the Indus, the Burampooter and
        Cambodia;
Others wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steamed up, ready to start;
Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia;
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg,
        Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen;
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama;
Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New
        Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco.

5.

I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth;
I see them welding State to State, city to city, through North America;
I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe;
I see them in Asia and in Africa.

I see the electric telegraphs of the earth;
I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,
        passions, of my race.

I see the long river-stripes of the earth;
I see where the Mississippi flows--I see where the Columbia flows;
I see the Great River, and the Falls of Niagara;
I see the Amazon and the Paraguay;
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River, the
        Yiang-tse, and the Pearl;
I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the
        Guadalquivir flow;
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder;
I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po;
I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

6.

I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that
        of India;
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human
        forms;
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth--oracles,
        sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters;
I see where druids walked the groves of Mona--I see the mistletoe and
        vervain;
I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods--I see the old
        signifiers.

I see Christ once more eating the bread of His last supper, in the midst of
        youths and old persons:
I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toiled faithfully
        and long, and then died;
I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful
        nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus;
I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his
        head;
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, _Do
        not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country--I
        now go back there,
I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn_.

7.

I see the battlefields of the earth--grass grows upon them, and blossoms
        and corn;
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.

I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events,
        heroes, records of the earth;
I see the places of the sagas;
I see pine-trees and fir-frees torn by northern blasts;
I see granite boulders and cliffs--I see green meadows and lakes;
I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors;
I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that
        the dead men's spirits, when they wearied of their quiet graves,
        might rise up through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing billows,
        and be refreshed by storms, immensity, liberty, action.

I see the steppes of Asia;
I see the tumuli of Mongolia--I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs;
I see the nomadic tribes, with herds of oxen and cows;
I see the table-lands notched with ravines--I see the jungles and deserts;
I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the
        antelope, and the burrowing-wolf.

I see the highlands of Abyssinia;
I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,
And see fields of teff-wheat, and see the places of verdure and gold.

I see the Brazilian vaquero;
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata;
I see the Wacho crossing the plains--I see the incomparable rider of horses
with his lasso on his arm;
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.

8.

I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited;
I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still;
I see ten fishermen waiting--they discover now a thick school of
        mossbonkers--they drop the joined sein-ends in the water,
The boats separate--they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course
        to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers;
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats--others stand negligently
        ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs;
The boats are partly drawn up--the water slaps against them;
On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the  water, lie the green-
        backed spotted mossbonkers.

9.

I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of
        Moingo, and about Lake Pepin;
He has heard the quail and beheld the honey-bee, and sadly prepared to
        depart.

I see the regions of snow and ice;
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn;
I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance;
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs;
I see the porpess-hunters--I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and
        the North Atlantic;
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland--I mark the
        long winters, and the isolation.

I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them;
I am a real Parisian;
I am a habitant of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople;
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne;
I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne,
        Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence;
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw--or northward in Christiania or
        Stockholm--or in Siberian Irkutsk--or in some street in Iceland;
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.

10.

I see vapours exhaling from unexplored countries;
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish,
        and the obi.

I see African and Asiatic towns;
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia;
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their
        huts;
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo;
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat;
I see Teheran--I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands--I see
        the caravans toiling onward;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians--I see the pyramids and obelisks;
I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of
        sandstone or on granite blocks;
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen
        cloth, lying there many centuries;
I look on the fallen Theban, the large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck,
        the hands folded across the breast.

I see the menials of the earth, labouring;
I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth;
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the
        earth;
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.

I see male and female everywhere;
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs;
I see the constructiveness of my race;
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race;
I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations--I go among them--I mix
        indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.

11.

You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed,
        nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbour of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman
        too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle shooting arrows
        to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on
        Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you
        peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of
        Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandeb, ruling your families
        and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or
        Lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
        Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of
        place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the
        same!
Health to you! Goodwill to you all--from me and America sent.

Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth:
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

12.

You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes!
You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space, are
        upon me.

You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your
        glimmering language and spirituality!
You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California!
You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lap!
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling,
        seeking your food!
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You bather bathing in the Ganges!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Fejee-man!
You peon of Mexico! you slave of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee!
I do not prefer others so very much before you either;
I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;
You will come forward in due time to my side.

My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
        earth;
I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
        lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalised me with them.

13.

O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
        continents, and fallen down there, for reasons;
I think I have blown with you, O winds;
O waters, I have fingered every shore with you.

I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through;
I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the highest
        embedded rocks, to cry thence.

_Salut au Monde!_
What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities
        myself;
All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself.

Toward all
I raise high the perpendicular hand--I make the signal,
To remain after me in sight for ever,
For all the haunts and homes of men.

_A BROADWAY PAGEANT._

(RECEPTION OF THE JAPANESE EMBASSY, JUNE 16, 1860.)

1.

Over sea, hither from Niphon,
Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheeked princes,
First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed,
        impassive,
This day they ride through Manhattan.

2.

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In the procession, along with the Princes of Asia, 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.

3.

When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements;
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love;
When the round-mouthed guns, out of the smoke and smell I love, spit their
        salutes;
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me--when 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 dressed, 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.

4.

Superb-faced Manhattan!
Comrade Americanos!--to us, then, at last, the Orient comes.
To us, my city,
Where our tall-topped marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides--to
        walk in the space between,
To-day our Antipodes comes.

The Originatress comes,
The land of Paradise--land of the Caucasus--the nest of birth,
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.

Not the errand-bearing princes, nor the tanned Japanee only;
Lithe and silent, the Hindoo appears--the whole Asiatic continent itself
        appears--the Past, the dead,
The murky night-morning of wonder and fable, inscrutable,
The enveloped mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
The North--the sweltering South--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--bronze, brahmin, and lama;
The mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman;
The singing-girl and the dancing-girl--the ecstatic person--the divine
        Buddha;
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
        seized by me,
And I am seized by them, and friendlily held by them,
Till, as here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.

5.

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;
I chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes;
I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind;
I chant commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work--races
        reborn, refreshed;
Lives, works, resumed--The object I know not--but the old, the Asiatic,
        resumed, as it must be,
Commencing from this day, surrounded by the world.

And you, Libertad of the world!
You shall sit in the middle, well-poised, thousands of years;
As to-day, from one side, the Princes 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 opened--nevertheless the perfume pours
        copiously out of the whole box.

6.

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 for once, young Libertad.

7.

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 accomplished--they shall now be turned the
        other way also, to travel toward you thence;
They shall now also march obediently eastward, for your sake, Libertad.

_OLD IRELAND._

1.

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen--now lean and tattered, seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round her shoulders;
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent--she too long silent--mourning her shrouded hope and heir;
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.

2.

Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between
        your knees;
O you need not sit there, veiled in your old white hair, so dishevelled;
For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an illusion--the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;
The Lord is not dead--he is risen again, young and strong, in another
        country;
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, passed from the grave,
The winds favoured, and the sea sailed it,
And now, with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.

_BOSTON TOWN._

1.

To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

2.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously
        tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes--I hope the fifes will play "Yankee
        Doodle,"
How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

3.

A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!
Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare
        gums?
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for
        firelocks, and level them?

If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's
        marshal;
If you groan such groans, you might baulk the government cannon.

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white
        hair be;
Here gape your great grandsons--their wives gaze at them from the windows,
See how well-dressed--see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.

4.

But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it is,
        gentlemen of Boston?

I will whisper it to the Mayor--He shall send a committee to England;
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal
        vault--haste!
Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes, box
        up his bones for a journey;
Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied
        clipper,
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston
        bay.

5.

Now call for the President's marshal again, bring out the government
        cannon,
Fetch home the roarers from Congress,--make another procession, guard it
        with foot and dragoons.

This centre-piece for them!
Look, all orderly citizens! Look from the windows, women!

The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue those that will not
        stay;
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

You have got your revenge, old bluster! The crown is come to its own, and
        more than its own.

6.

Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from this
        day;
You are mighty 'cute--and here is one of your bargains.

_FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES._[1]

1.

A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart
        closer than any yet.

2.

I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of
        cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running--nor from the single
        corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils;
Was not so desperate at the battues of death--was not so shocked at the
        repeated fusillades of the guns.

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
Could I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

3.

O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the bullet, and the axe, in reserve to fetch them out
        in case of need,
Here too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed;
Here too could rise at last, murdering and ecstatic;
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.

Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing--and wait with perfect
        trust, no matter how long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed cause, as for
        all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some _chansonniers_ there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France--floods of it.
O I hear already the bustle of instruments--they will soon be drowning all
        that would interrupt them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
It reaches hither--it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, _ma femme!_

[Footnote 1: 1793-4---The great poet of Democracy is "not so shocked" at
the great European year of Democracy.]

_EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES._[1]

1.

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags--its hands tight to the throats of
        kings.

O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.

2.

And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity
        the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the
        breaking,
Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the
        heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.

3.

But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened
        rulers come back;
Each comes in state with his train--hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.

4.

Yet behind all, lowering, stealing--lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, in scarlet
        folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see:
Out of its robes only this--the red robes, lifted by the arm--
One finger crooked, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake
        appears.

5.

Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves--bloody corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying,
        the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits--and they are good.

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets--those hearts pierced by the grey
        lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughtered
        vitality.

They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death--they were taught and exalted.
Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its
        turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counselling,
        cautioning.

6.

Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.

Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready--be not weary of watching:
He will soon return--his messengers come anon.

[Footnote 1: The years 1848 and 1849.]

_TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR REVOLTRESS._

1.

Courage! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quelled by one or two failures, or any number of
        failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
        unfaithfulness,
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

2.

What we believe in waits latent for ever through all the continents, and
        all the islands and archipelagoes of the sea.

What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and
        light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

3.

The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs--or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-
        balls, do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled--they lie sick in distant lands,
The cause is asleep--the strongest throats are still, choked
with their own blood,
The young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;
But, for all this, Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel
        entered into possession.

When Liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second
        or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go--it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from
        any part of the earth,
Then only shall Liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel and the tyrant come into possession.

4.

Then courage! revolter! revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must you cease.

5.

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor
        what anything is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foiled,
In defeat, poverty, imprisonment--for they too are great.

Did we think victory great?
So it is--But now it seems to me, when it cannot be helped, that defeat is
        great,
And that death and dismay are great.

_DRUM TAPS._

_MANHATTAN ARMING._

1.

First, O songs, for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretched 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.

2.

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,
Incensed, struck with clenched hand the pavement.

A shock electric--the night sustained it;
Till, with ominous hum, our hive at daybreak poured out its myriads.

From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
Leaped they tumultuous--and lo! Manhattan arming.

3.

To the drum-taps prompt,
The young men falling in and arming;
The mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-smith's hammer,
        tossed aside with precipitation;
The lawyer leaving his office, and arming--the judge leaving the court;
The driver deserting his waggon 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 gathering everywhere by common consent, and arming;
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 armed sentries around--the sunrise
        cannon, and again at sunset;
Armed 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 covered with dust!
The blood of the city up--armed! armed! 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, unlimbered, to begin the red business!
All the mutter of preparation--all the determined 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 armed race is advancing!--the welcome for battle--no turning away;
War! be it weeks, months, or years--an armed race is advancing to welcome
        it.

4.

Mannahatta a-march!--and it's O to sing it well!
It's O for a manly life in the camp!

5.

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 else now besides powder and wadding.

6.

And you, Lady of Ships! you, Mannahatta!
Old matron of the city! this proud, friendly, turbulent city!
Often in peace and wealth you were pensive, or covertly frowned amid all
your children;
But now you smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta!

_1861._

Armed year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a
        rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands--with a knife in the
        belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous voice ringing across the
        continent;
Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in
        Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the
        Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio
        river;
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on
        the mountain-top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing
        weapons, robust year;
Heard your determined voice, launched forth again and again;
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

_THE UPRISING._

1.

Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer
        sweep!
Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what the earth gave me;
Long I roamed the woods of the North--long I watched Niagara pouring;
I travelled the prairies over, and slept on their breast--I crossed the
        Nevadas,
I crossed the plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sailed out to sea;
I sailed through the storm, I was refreshed by the storm;
I watched with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
I marked the white combs where they careered 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 bellowed 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 North-west, 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,
        unchained;
--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 walked my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half
        satisfied;
One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawled on the ground before
        me,
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing
        low;
--The cities I loved so well I abandoned and left--I sped to the
        certainties suitable to me
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature's
        dauntlessness,
I refreshed 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 witnessed the true lightning--I have witnessed 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 on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea.

_BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!_

1.

Beat! beat! drums!--Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows--through doors--burst like a force of ruthless men,
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;
Nor 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.

2.

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.

3.

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.

_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 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;
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.

BANNER AND 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 us, 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 toiled 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 and 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 of 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-walled houses.

BANNER AND PENNANT.

Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan;
Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground,
Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-ploughs are ploughing;
Speak, O bard! 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
        finished;
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 a while, 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, earned
        wages;
See the identity formed out of thirty-six 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 lengthened pennant shaped like a
        sword
Runs swiftly up, indicating war and defiance--And now the halyards have
        raised 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 can be terror and carnage also, and are so now.
Not now are we one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor
        ten;)
Nor market nor depot are 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 are ours, and the crops, and the fruits are
        ours;
Bays and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours--and we over all,
Over the area spread below, the three millions of square miles--the
        capitals,
The thirty-five millions of people--O bard! in life and death supreme,
We, even we, from this day 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 henceforth for ever;
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?

POET.

Demons and death then I sing;
Put in all, aye all, will I--sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so
        broad and blue,
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 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.

BANNER AND PENNANT.

Aye all! for ever, for all!
From sea to sea, north and south, east and west,
Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole;
No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,
But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,
Croaking like crows here in the wind.

POET.

My limbs, my veins dilate;
The blood of the world has filled me full--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, deafened and blinded;
My sight, 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 are you, nor any nor all their prosperity; if need be,
you shall 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, unless you, above them and all,
        stand fast.
--O banner! not money so precious are you, nor 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, touched by the sun, measuring the
        sky,
Passionately seen and yearned for by one poor little child,
While others remain busy, or smartly talking, for ever 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--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.

_THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME._

By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;--but first I
        note
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,
The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire--the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily
        watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
Of life and death--of home and the past and loved, and of those that are
        far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac's fitful flame.

_BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE._

I see before me now a travelling army halting;
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;
Broken with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen;
The numerous camp-fires scattered near and far, some away up on the
        mountain;
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering;
And over all, the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the
        eternal stars.

_CITY OF SHIPS._

City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bowed 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 offered 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!

_VIGIL ON THE FIELD._

VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night,
When you, my son and my comrade, dropped at my side that day.
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes returned with a look I shall
        never forget;
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reached up as you lay on the ground.
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;
Till, late in the night relieved, to the place at last again I made my way;
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade--found your body, son of
        responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the starlight--curious the scene--cool blew the moderate
        night-wind.
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield
        spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night.
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh--Long, long I gazed;
Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in
        my hands;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you, dearest comrade--
Not a tear, not a word;
Vigil of silence, love, and death--vigil for you, my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;
Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your
        death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living--I think we shall surely
        meet again;)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appeared,
My comrade I wrapped in his blanket, enveloped well his form,
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head, and carefully
        under feet;
And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in
        his rude-dug grave, I deposited;
Ending my vigil strange with that--vigil of night and battlefield dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, never again on earth responding;
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget--how as day
        brightened
I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell.

_THE FLAG._

Bathed in war's perfume--delicate flag!
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful
        woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they
        arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women.

_THE WOUNDED._

A march in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foiled 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--'tis 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 staunch 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 of soldiers--the yard outside
        also filled;
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, as ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.

_A SIGHT IN CAMP._

1.

A sight in camp in the daybreak grey 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,
Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

2.

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-greyed 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 of yours is the face of
        the Christ Himself;
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again He lies.

_A GRAVE._

1.

As toilsome I wandered Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling leaves kicked by my feet--for 'twas autumn--
I marked at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat--easily all could I
        understand;
The halt of a mid-day hour--when, Up! no time to lose! Yet this sign left
On a tablet scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave,
_Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade_.

2.

Long, long I muse,--then on my way go wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life.
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt,--alone, or in the
        crowded street,--
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in
        Virginia's woods,
_Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade_.

_THE 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, Years
        hence) "of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpassed 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, covered 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 captured 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,
In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the
        doors--(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me 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 roofed 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 filled with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled 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.

On, on I go--(open, doors of time! open, hospital doors!)
The crushed 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 curved 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 looked 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 fractured 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.

3.

Thus in silence, in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and the 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 crossed and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.

_A LETTER FROM CAMP._

1.

"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."

2.

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 trellised 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.

3.

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 white hair, nor adjust her cap.

4.

Open the envelope quickly;
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed;
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--"_gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken
        to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better_."

5.

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.

6.

"Grieve not so, dear mother," the just-grown daughter speaks through her
        sobs;
The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed;
"See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better."

7.

Alas! poor boy, he will never be better, (nor maybe 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 dressed in black;
By day her meals untouched--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!

_WAR DREAMS._

1.

In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle,
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.

2.

Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains,
Of the skies so beauteous after the 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.

3.

Long have they passed, long lapsed--faces, and trenches, and fields:
Long through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the
fallen
Onward I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night,
    I dream, I dream, I dream.

_THE VETERAN'S VISION._

While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the mystic midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath
        of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me.
The engagement opens there and then, in my busy brain unreal;
The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the irregular
        snap! snap!
I hear the sound of the different missiles--the short _t-h-t! t-h-t!_ of
        the rifle-balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds--I hear the great
        shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick,
        tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The crashing and smoking--the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the
        right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the
        effect;
--Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging--the young colonel leads
        himself this time, with brandished sword;
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up--no delay;
I breathe the suffocating smoke--then the flat clouds hover low, concealing
        all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either
        side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of
        officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout
        of applause, (some special success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a
        devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my
        soul;
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions--batteries, cavalry,
        moving hither and thither;
The falling, dying, I heed not--the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not--
        some to the rear are hobbling;
Grime, heat, rush--aides-de-camp galloping by, or on a full run:
With the patter of small arms, the warning _s-s-t_ of the rifles, (these in
        my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-coloured rockets.

_O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY._

O tan-faced prairie boy!
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food--till at last, among the
        recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but looked on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

_MANHATTAN FACES._

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 unmowed grass grows;
Give me an arbour, give me the trellised 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
        undisturbed;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed 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, relieved, 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
        racked 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 enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul--you give me for ever
        faces;
O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;
I see my own soul trampling down what it asked 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 cornfields 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 thinned ranks--young, yet very old,
        worn, marching, noticing nothing;
--Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life! O 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 waggons
        following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the 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--with varied chorus
        and light of the sparkling eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!

_OVER THE CARNAGE._

1.

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,--
Be not disheartened--Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible--they shall yet make
        Columbia victorious.

Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be victorious!
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.

No danger shall baulk Columbia's lovers;
If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade;
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be
        friends triune,
More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.

To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come;
Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.

It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection;
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly;
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron;
I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.

2.

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
--Nay--nor the world nor any living thing will so cohere.

_THE MOTHER OF ALL._

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all,
Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields,
        gazing;
As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.
"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,
And all you essences of soil and growth--and you, O my  rivers' depths;
And you mountain-sides--and the woods where my dear children's blood,
        trickling, reddened;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb--my young men's beautiful bodies absorb--and their precious,
        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."

_CAMPS OF GREEN._

1.

Not alone our camps of white, O soldiers,
When, as ordered forward, after a long march,
Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens, we halt for the night;
Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in
        our tracks;
Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle;
Outposts of pickets posted, surrounding, alert through the dark,
And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety;
Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums,
We rise up refreshed, the night and sleep passed over, and resume our
        journey,
Or proceed to battle.

2.

Lo! the camps of the tents of green,
Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling,
With a mystic army, (is it too ordered forward? is it too only halting a
        while,
Till night and sleep pass over?)

Now in those camps of green--in their tents dotting the world;
In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them--in the old and young,
Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and
        silent there at last;
Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of us and ours and all,
Of our corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and
        generals all,
And of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fight,
There without hatred we shall all meet.

For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of
        green;
But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign,
Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.

_DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS._

1.

  The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath
On the pavement here--and, there beyond, it is looking
  Down a new-made double grave.

2.

  Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon;
  Immense and silent moon.

3.

  I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
  As with voices and with tears.

4.

  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.

5.

  For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
  And the double grave awaits them.

6.

  Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive;
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
  And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

7.

  In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
'Tis some mother's large, transparent face,
  In heaven brighter growing.

8.

  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.

9.

    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.

_SURVIVORS._

How solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all 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!

_HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS._

1.

One breath, O my silent soul!
A perfumed thought--no more I ask, for the sake of all dead soldiers.

2.

Buglers off in my armies!
At present I ask not you to sound;
Not at the head of my cavalry, all on their spirited horses,
With their sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines clanking 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.

3.

But aside from these, and the crowd's hurrahs, and the land's
        congratulations,
Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and voiceless,
I chant this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead soldiers.

4.

Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet;
Draw close, but speak not.
Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender!
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 now is over;
But love is not over--and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battlefields rising--up from foetor arising.

Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal love!
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers.

Perfume all! make all wholesome!
O love! O chant! solve all with the last chemistry.

Give me exhaustless--make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go,
For the sake of all dead soldiers.

_SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE._

Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets--
Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, yet onward ever unfaltering pressing!
Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit!
That with muttering voice, through the years now closed, like a tireless
        phantom flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum;
--Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates
        round me;
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles;
While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders;
While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the
        distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,
Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left,
Evenly, lightly, rising and falling, as the steps keep time:
--Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next
        day;
Touch my mouth, ere you depart--press my lips close!
Leave me your pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with currents
        convulsive!
Let them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone;
Let them identify you to the future in these songs!

_RECONCILIATION._

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly
        lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
        again, and ever again, this soiled world.
For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead.
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near;
I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

_AFTER THE WAR._

To the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last;
Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead:
But forth from my tent emerging for good--loosing, untying the tent-ropes;
In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and
        vistas, again to peace restored;
To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond--to the south
        and the north;
To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs,
To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace,
To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide,
To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air.
And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)
The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely;
The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son:--
The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end;
But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs.

WALT WHITMAN

_ASSIMILATIONS._

1.

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the
        day, or for many years, or tretching cycles of years.

2.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover,
        and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2]
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's
        foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the
        beautiful, curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful fiat heads--all became part of
        him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part or him;

3.
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent
        roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and
        wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern,
        whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents;
He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb, and
        birthed him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him.
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour
        falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture--the yearning
        and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsaid--the sense of what is real--the thought
        if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the curious whether
        and how--
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not flashes and
        specks, what are they?
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the
        windows,