1
SINGING my days, | |
| Singing the great achievements of the present, | |
| Singing the strong, light works of engineers, | |
| Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) | |
| In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal, | 5 |
| The New by its mighty railroad spann’d, | |
| The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires, | |
| I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul, | |
| The Past! the Past! the Past! | |
| |
| The Past! the dark, unfathom’d retrospect! | 10 |
| The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows! | |
| The past! the infinite greatness of the past! | |
| For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? | |
| (As a projectile, form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on, | |
| So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.) | 15 |
| |
2
Passage, O soul, to India! | |
| Eclaircise the myths Asiatic—the primitive fables. | |
| |
| Not you alone, proud truths of the world! | |
| Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science! | |
| But myths and fables of eld—Asia’s, Africa’s fables! | 20 |
| The far-darting beams of the spirit!—the unloos’d dreams! | |
| The deep diving bibles and legends; | |
| The daring plots of the poets—the elder religions; | |
| —O you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! | |
| O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! | 25 |
| You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold! | |
| Towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams! | |
| You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest; | |
| You too with joy I sing. | |
| |
3
Passage to India! | 30 |
| Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? | |
| The earth to be spann’d, connected by net-work, | |
| The people to become brothers and sisters, | |
| The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, | |
| The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, | 35 |
| The lands to be welded together. | |
| |
| (A worship new, I sing; | |
| You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours! | |
| You engineers! you architects, machinists, your! | |
| You, not for trade or transportation only, | 40 |
| But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.) | |
| |
4
Passage to India! | |
| Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain, | |
| I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open’d, | |
| I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van; | 45 |
| I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance; | |
| I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d, | |
| The gigantic dredging machines. | |
| |
| In one, again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) | |
| I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, surmounting every barrier; | 50 |
| I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying freight and passengers; | |
| I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, | |
| I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world; | |
| I cross the Laramie plains—I note the rocks in grotesque shapes—the buttes; | |
| I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions—the barren, colorless, sage-deserts; | 55 |
| I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above me, the great mountains—I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains; | |
| I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest—I pass the Promontory—I ascend the Nevadas; | |
| I scan the noble Elk mountain, and wind around its base; | |
| I see the Humboldt range—I thread the valley and cross the river, | |
| I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe—I see forests of majestic pines, | 60 |
| Or, crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows; | |
| Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slender lines, | |
| Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, | |
| Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, | |
| The road between Europe and Asia. | 65 |
| |
| (Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream! | |
| Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, | |
| The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!) | |
| |
5
Passage to India! | |
| Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead! | 70 |
| Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come, | |
| Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky. | |
| |
| Along all history, down the slopes, | |
| As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, | |
| A ceaseless thought, a varied train—Lo, soul! to thee, thy sight, they rise, | 75 |
| The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions: | |
| Again Vasco de Gama sails forth; | |
| Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass, | |
| Lands found, and nations born—thou born, America, (a hemisphere unborn,) | |
| For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d, | 80 |
| Thou, rondure of the world, at last accomplish’d. | |
| |
6
O, vast Rondure, swimming in space! | |
| Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty! | |
| Alternate light and day, and the teeming, spiritual darkness; | |
| Unspeakable, high processions of sun and moon, and countless stars, above; | 85 |
| Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees; | |
| With inscrutable purpose—some hidden, prophetic intention; | |
| Now, first, it seems, my thought begins to span thee. | |
| |
| Down from the gardens of Asia, descending, radiating, | |
| Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, | 90 |
| Wandering, yearning, curious—with restless explorations, | |
| With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish—with never-happy hearts, | |
| With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied Soul? and Whither, O mocking Life? | |
| |
| Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children? | |
| Who justify these restless explorations? | 95 |
| Who speak the secret of impassive Earth? | |
| Who bind it to us? What is this separate Nature, so unnatural? | |
| What is this Earth, to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours; | |
| Cold earth, the place of graves.) | |
| |
| Yet, soul, be sure the first intent remains—and shall be carried out; | 100 |
| (Perhaps even now the time has arrived.) | |
| |
| After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,) | |
| After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work, | |
| After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, | |
| Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name; | 105 |
| The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs. | |
| |
| Then, not your deeds only, O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, | |
| All these hearts, as of fretted children, shall be sooth’d, | |
| All affection shall be fully responded to—the secret shall be told; | |
| All these separations and gaps shall be taken up, and hook’d and link’d together; | 110 |
| The whole Earth—this cold, impassive, voiceless Earth, shall be completely justified; | |
| Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the the Son of God, the poet, | |
| (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, | |
| He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose;) | |
| Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, | 115 |
| The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them. | |
| |
7
Year at whose open’d, wide-flung door I sing! | |
| Year of the purpose accomplish’d! | |
| Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans! | |
| (No mere Doge of Venice now, wedding the Adriatic;) | 120 |
| I see, O year, in you, the vast terraqueous globe, given, and giving all, | |
| Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World; | |
| The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland, | |
| As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand. | |
| |
8
Passage to India! | 125 |
| Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, | |
| The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again. | |
| |
| Lo, soul, the retrospect, brought forward; | |
| The old, most populous, wealthiest of Earth’s lands, | |
| The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluents; | 130 |
| (I, my shores of America walking to-day, behold, resuming all,) | |
| The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches, suddenly dying, | |
| On one side China, and on the other side Persia and Arabia, | |
| To the south the great seas, and the Bay of Bengal; | |
| The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes, | 135 |
| Old occult Brahma, interminably far back—the tender and junior Buddha, | |
| Central and southern empires, and all their belongings, possessors, | |
| The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe, | |
| The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, | |
| The first travelers, famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor, | 140 |
| Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d, | |
| The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest, | |
| Thyself, O soul, that will not brook a challenge. | |
| |
9
The medieval navigators rise before me, | |
| The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise; | 145 |
| Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring, | |
| The sunset splendor of chivalry declining. | |
| |
| And who art thou, sad shade? | |
| Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, | |
| With majestic limbs, and pious, beaming eyes, | 150 |
| Spreading around, with every look of thine, a golden world, | |
| Enhuing it with gorgeous hues. | |
| |
| As the chief histrion, | |
| Down to the footlights walks, in some great scena, | |
| Dominating the rest, I see the Admiral himself, | 155 |
| (History’s type of courage, action, faith;) | |
| Behold him sail from Palos, leading his little fleet; | |
| His voyage behold—his return—his great fame, | |
| His misfortunes, calumniators—behold him a prisoner, chain’d, | |
| Behold his dejection, poverty, death. | 160 |
| |
| (Curious, in time, I stand, noting the efforts of heroes; | |
| Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death? | |
| Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? Lo! to God’s due occasion, | |
| Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, | |
| And fills the earth with use and beauty.) | 165 |
| |
10
Passage indeed, O soul, to primal thought! | |
| Not lands and seas alone—thy own clear freshness, | |
| The young maturity of brood and bloom; | |
| To realms of budding bibles. | |
| |
| O soul, repressless, I with thee, and thou with me, | 170 |
| Thy circumnavigation of the world begin; | |
| Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return, | |
| To reason’s early paradise, | |
| Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions, | |
| Again with fair Creation. | 175 |
| |
11
O we can wait no longer! | |
| We too take ship, O soul! | |
| Joyous, we too launch out on trackless seas! | |
| Fearless, for unknown shores, on waves of extasy to sail, | |
| Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) | 180 |
| Caroling free—singing our song of God, | |
| Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration. | |
| |
| With laugh, and many a kiss, | |
| (Let others deprecate—let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation;) | |
| O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee. | 185 |
| |
| Ah, more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in God; | |
| But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. | |
| |
| O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee; | |
| Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night, | |
| Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing, | 190 |
| Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite, | |
| Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all over; | |
| Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee, | |
| I and my soul to range in range of thee. | |
| |
| O Thou transcendant! | 195 |
| Nameless—the fibre and the breath! | |
| Light of the light—shedding forth universes—thou centre of them! | |
| Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving! | |
| Thou moral, spiritual fountain! affection’s source! thou reservoir! | |
| (O pensive soul of me! O thirst unsatisfied! waitest not there? | 200 |
| Waitest not haply for us, somewhere there, the Comrade perfect?) | |
| Thou pulse! thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, | |
| That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, | |
| Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space! | |
| |
| How should I think—how breathe a single breath—how speak—if, out of myself, | 205 |
| I could not launch, to those, superior universes? | |
| |
| Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, | |
| At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, | |
| But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual Me, | |
| And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs, | 210 |
| Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, | |
| And fillest, swellest full, the vastnesses of Space. | |
| |
| Greater than stars or suns, | |
| Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth; | |
| —What love, than thine and ours could wider amplify? | 215 |
| What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul? | |
| What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? | |
| What cheerful willingness, for others’ sake, to give up all? | |
| For others’ sake to suffer all? | |
| |
| Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d, | 220 |
| (The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,) | |
| Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d, | |
| As, fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, | |
| The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. | |
| |
12
Passage to more than India! | 225 |
| Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? | |
| O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these? | |
| Disportest thou on waters such as these? | |
| Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas? | |
| Then have thy bent unleash’d. | 230 |
| |
| Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! | |
| Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! | |
| You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you. | |
| |
13
Passage to more than India! | |
| O secret of the earth and sky! | 235 |
| Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! | |
| Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains of my land! | |
| Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks! | |
| O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! | |
| O day and night, passage to you! | 240 |
| |
| O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! | |
| Passage to you! | |
| |
| Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! | |
| Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! | |
| Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! | 245 |
| Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? | |
| Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? | |
| Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough? | |
| |
| Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only! | |
| Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me; | 250 |
| For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, | |
| And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. | |
| |
| O my brave soul! | |
| O farther, farther sail! | |
| O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God? | 255 |
| O farther, farther, farther sail! | |