1
STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born, | |
| Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother; | |
| After roaming many lands—lover of populous pavements; | |
| Dweller in Mannahatta, my city—or on southern savannas; | |
| Or a soldier camp’d, or carrying my knapsack and gun—or a miner in California; | 5 |
| Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring; | |
| Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, | |
| Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy; | |
| Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri—aware of mighty Niagara; | |
| Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains—the hirsute and strong-breasted bull; | 10 |
| Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced—stars, rain, snow, my amaze; | |
| Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones, and the mountainhawk’s, | |
| And heard at dusk the unrival’d one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars, | |
| Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World. | |
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2
Victory, union, faith, identity, time, | 15 |
| The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, | |
| Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. | |
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| This, then, is life; | |
| Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. | |
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| How curious! how real! | 20 |
| Underfoot the divine soil—overhead the sun. | |
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| See, revolving, the globe; | |
| The ancestor-continents, away, group’d together; | |
| The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus between. | |
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| See, vast, trackless spaces; | 25 |
| As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill; | |
| Countless masses debouch upon them; | |
| They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known. | |
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| See, projected, through time, | |
| For me, an audience interminable. | 30 |
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| With firm and regular step they wend—they never stop, | |
| Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions; | |
| One generation playing its part, and passing on; | |
| Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn, | |
| With faces turn’d sideways or backward towards me, to listen, | 35 |
| With eyes retrospective towards me, | |
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3
Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian; | |
| Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses! | |
| For you a programme of chants. | |
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| Chants of the prairies; | 40 |
| Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea; | |
| Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota; | |
| Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equi-distant, | |
| Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all. | |
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4
In the Year 80 of The States, | 45 |
| My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, | |
| Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same, | |
| I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin, | |
| Hoping to cease not till death. | |
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| Creeds and schools in abeyance, | 50 |
| (Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,) | |
| I harbor, for good or bad—I permit to speak, at every hazard, | |
| Nature now without check, with original energy. | |
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5
Take my leaves, America! take them, South, and take them, North! | |
| Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring; | 55 |
| Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you; | |
| And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you. | |
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| I conn’d old times; | |
| I sat studying at the feet of the great masters: | |
| Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me! | 60 |
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| In the name of These States, shall I scorn the antique? | |
| Why These are the children of the antique, to justify it. | |
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6
Dead poets, philosophs, priests, | |
| Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, | |
| Language-shapers, on other shores, | 65 |
| Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, | |
| I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted hither: | |
| I have perused it—own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;) | |
| Think nothing can ever be greater—nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves; | |
| Regarding it all intently a long while—then dismissing it, | 70 |
| I stand in my place, with my own day, here. | |
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| Here lands female and male; | |
| Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world—here the flame of materials; | |
| Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avow’d, | |
| The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms; | 75 |
| The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing, | |
| Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul. | |
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7
The SOUL: | |
| Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than water ebbs and flows. | |
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| I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems; | 80 |
| And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, | |
| For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my Soul, and of immortality. | |
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| I will make a song for These States, that no-one State may under any circumstances be subjected to another State; | |
| And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all The States, and between any two of them: | |
| And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points, | 85 |
| And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces: | |
| —And a song make I, of the One form’d out of all; | |
| The fang’d and glittering One whose head is over all; | |
| Resolute, warlike One, including and over all; | |
| (However high the head of any else, that head is over all.) | 90 |
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| I will acknowledge contemporary lands; | |
| I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every city large and small; | |
| And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon land and sea; | |
| And I will report all heroism from an American point of view. | |
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| I will sing the song of companionship; | 95 |
| I will show what alone must finally compact These; | |
| I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me; | |
| I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me; | |
| I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires; | |
| I will give them complete abandonment; | 100 |
| I will write the evangel-poem of comrades, and of love; | |
| (For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? | |
| And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) | |
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8
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races; | |
| I advance from the people in their own spirit; | 105 |
| Here is what sings unrestricted faith. | |
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| Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may; | |
| I make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that part also; | |
| I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—And I say there is in fact no evil; | |
| (Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to me, as anything else.) | 110 |
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| I too, following many, and follow’d by many, inaugurate a Religion—I descend into the arena; | |
| (It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there, the winner’s pealing shouts; | |
| Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.) | |
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| Each is not for its own sake; | |
| I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for Religion’s sake. | 115 |
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| I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough; | |
| None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough; | |
| None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is. | |
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| I say that the real and permanent grandeur of These States must be their Religion; | |
| Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur: | 120 |
| (Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without Religion; | |
| Nor land, nor man or woman, without Religion.) | |
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9
What are you doing, young man? | |
| Are you so earnest—so given up to literature, science, art, amours? | |
| These ostensible realities, politics, points? | 125 |
| Your ambition or business, whatever it may be? | |
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| It is well—Against such I say not a word—I am their poet also; | |
| But behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for Religion’s sake; | |
| For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth, | |
| Any more than such are to Religion. | 130 |
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10
What do you seek, so pensive and silent? | |
| What do you need, Camerado? | |
| Dear son! do you think it is love? | |
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| Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son! | |
| It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it satisfies—it is great; | 135 |
| But there is something else very great—it makes the whole coincide; | |
| It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all. | |
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11
Know you! solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater Religion, | |
| The following chants, each for its kind, I sing. | |
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| My comrade! | 140 |
| For you, to share with me, two greatnesses—and a third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent, | |
| The greatness of Love and Democracy—and the greatness of Religion. | |
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| Melange mine own! the unseen and the seen; | |
| Mysterious ocean where the streams empty; | |
| Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me; | 145 |
| Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us, in the air, that we know not of; | |
| Contact daily and hourly that will not release me; | |
| These selecting—these, in hints, demanded of me. | |
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| Not he, with a daily kiss, onward from childhood kissing me, | |
| Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him, | 150 |
| Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world, | |
| And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true, | |
| After what they have done to me, suggesting themes. | |
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| O such themes! Equalities! | |
| O amazement of things! O divine average! | 155 |
| O warblings under the sun—usher’d, as now, or at noon, or setting! | |
| O strain, musical, flowing through ages—now reaching hither! | |
| I take to your reckless and composite chords—I add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward. | |
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12
As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk, | |
| I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briers, hatching her brood. | 160 |
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| I have seen the he-bird also; | |
| I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully singing. | |
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| And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, | |
| Nor for his mate, nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes; | |
| But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, | 165 |
| A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born. | |
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13
Democracy! | |
| Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing. | |
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| Ma femme! | |
| For the brood beyond us and of us, | 170 |
| For those who belong here, and those to come, | |
| I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth. | |
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| I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way, | |
| And your songs, outlaw’d offenders—for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any. | |
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| I will make the true poem of riches, | 175 |
| To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and is not dropt by death. | |
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| I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all—and I will be the bard of personality; | |
| And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other; | |
| And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me—for I am determin’d to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious; | |
| And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present—and can be none in the future; | 180 |
| And I will show that whatever happens to anybody, it may be turn’d to beautiful results—and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death; | |
| And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, | |
| And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any. | |
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| I will not make poems with reference to parts; | |
| But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts with reference to ensemble: | 185 |
| And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days; | |
| And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference to the Soul; | |
| (Because, having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the Soul.) | |
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14
Was somebody asking to see the Soul? | |
| See! your own shape and countenance—persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands. | 190 |
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| All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them: | |
| How can the real body ever die, and be buried? | |
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| Of your real body, and any man’s or woman’s real body, | |
| Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to fitting spheres, | |
| Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death. | 195 |
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| Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the main concern, | |
| Any more than a man’s substance and life, or a woman’s substance and life, return in the body and the Soul, | |
| Indifferently before death and after death. | |
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| Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern—and includes and is the Soul; | |
| Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it. | 200 |
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15
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements. | |
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| Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet? | |
| Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand? | |
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| Toward the male of The States, and toward the female of The States, | |
| Live words—words to the lands. | 205 |
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| O the lands! interlink’d, food-yielding lands! | |
| Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice! | |
| Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and grape! | |
| Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus! | |
| Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie! | 210 |
| Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest Colorado winds! | |
| Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware! | |
| Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! | |
| Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut! | |
| Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks! | 215 |
| Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen’s land! | |
| Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones! | |
| The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb’d! | |
| The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! | |
| Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d! the diverse! the compact! | 220 |
| The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian! | |
| O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with perfect love! | |
| I cannot be discharged from you! not from one, any sooner than another! | |
| O Death! O for all that, I am yet of you, unseen, this hour, with irrepressible love, | |
| Walking New England, a friend, a traveler, | 225 |
| Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok’s sands, | |
| Crossing the prairies—dwelling again in Chicago—dwelling in every town, | |
| Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts, | |
| Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls, | |
| Of and through The States, as during life—each man and woman my neighbor, | 230 |
| The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her, | |
| The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me—and I yet with any of them; | |
| Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river—yet in my house of adobie, | |
| Yet returning eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland, | |
| Yet Kanadian, cheerily braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome to me, | 235 |
| Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State, or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State; | |
| Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same—yet welcoming every new brother; | |
| Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with the old ones; | |
| Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal—coming personally to you now; | |
| Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me. | 240 |
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16
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on. | |
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| For your life, adhere to me! | |
| Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you; | |
| I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you—but what of that? | |
| Must not Nature be persuaded many times? | 245 |
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| No dainty dolce affettuoso I; | |
| Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, forbidding, I have arrived, | |
| To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe; | |
| For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. | |
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17
On my way a moment I pause; | 250 |
| Here for you! and here for America! | |
| Still the Present I raise aloft—Still the Future of The States I harbinge, glad and sublime; | |
| And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. | |
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| The red aborigines! | |
| Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names; | 255 |
| Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, | |
| Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; | |
| Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. | |
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18
O expanding and swift! O henceforth, | |
| Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious; | 260 |
| A world primal again—Vistas of glory, incessant and branching; | |
| A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far—with new contests, | |
| New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts. | |
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| These! my voice announcing—I will sleep no more, but arise; | |
| You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms. | 265 |
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19
See! steamers steaming through my poems! | |
| See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; | |
| See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flatboat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; | |
| See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores. | |
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| See, pastures and forests in my poems—See, animals, wild and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly grass; | 270 |
| See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; | |
| See, the many-cylinder’d steam printing-press—See, the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan; | |
| See, through Atlantica’s depths, pulses American, Europe reaching—pulses of Europe, duly return’d; | |
| See, the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle; | |
| See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners, digging mines—See, the numberless factories; | 275 |
| See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses; | |
| See, lounging through the shops and fields of The States, me, well-belov’d, close-held by day and night; | |
| Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last. | |
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20
O Camerado close! | |
| O you and me at last—and us two only. | 280 |
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| O a word to clear one’s path ahead endlessly! | |
| O something extatic and undemonstrable! O music wild! | |
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| O now I triumph—and you shall also; | |
| O hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more desirer and lover! | |
| O to haste, firm holding—to haste, haste on with me. | 285 |
