1
RISE, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep! | |
| Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour’d what the earth gave me; | |
| Long I roam’d the woods of the north—long I watch’d Niagara pouring; | |
| I travel’d the prairies over, and slept on their breast—I cross’d the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus; | |
| I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea; | 5 |
| I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm; | |
| I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves; | |
| I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over; | |
| I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds; | |
| Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!) | 10 |
| Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow’d after the lightning; | |
| Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; | |
| —These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful; | |
| All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me; | |
| Yet there with my soul I fed—I fed content, supercilious. | 15 |
| |
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; | 20 |
| Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed inexhaustible?) | |
| What, to pavements and homesteads here—what were those storms of the mountains and sea? | |
| What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen? | |
| Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds? | |
| Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage; | 25 |
| Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain’d; | |
| —What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here! | |
| How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes! | |
| How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning! | |
| How DEMOCRACY, with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! | 30 |
| (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; | 35 |
| My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment; | |
| —Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half-satisfied; | |
| One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me, | |
| Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; | |
| —The cities I loved so well, I abandon’d and left—I sped to the certainties suitable to me; | 40 |
| Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature’s dauntlessness, | |
| I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only; | |
| I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited long; | |
| —But now I no longer wait—I am fully satisfied—I am glutted; | |
| I have witness’d the true lightning—I have witness’d my cities electric; | 45 |
| 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. | |
