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A SONG of the good green grass! | |
| A song no more of the city streets; | |
| A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. | |
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| A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; | |
| A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize. | 5 |
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2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, | |
| Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, | |
| Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, | |
| Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, | |
| Tuning a verse for thee. | 10 |
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| O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! | |
| O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! | |
| O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! | |
| A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. | |
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3
Ever upon this stage, | 15 |
| Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, | |
| Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, | |
| Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, | |
| The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, | |
| The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, | 20 |
| The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass, | |
| The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, | |
| The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra, | |
| The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging, silvery fringes, | |
| The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars, | 25 |
| The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, | |
| The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products. | |
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4
Fecund America! To-day, | |
| Thou art all over set in births and joys! | |
| Thou groan’st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment! | 30 |
| Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions! | |
| A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne! | |
| As some huge ship, freighted to water’s edge, thou ridest into port! | |
| As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee, and risen out of thee! | |
| Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! | 35 |
| Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty! | |
| Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns! | |
| Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East, and lookest West! | |
| Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles—that giv’st a million farms, and missest nothing! | |
| Thou All-Acceptress—thou Hospitable—(thou only art hospitable, as God is hospitable.) | 40 |
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5
When late I sang, sad was my voice; | |
| Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict; | |
| In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood, | |
| Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying. | |
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| But now I sing not War, | 45 |
| Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, | |
| Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle. | |
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| No more the dead and wounded; | |
| No more the sad, unnatural shows of War. | |
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| Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies? | 50 |
| Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks—the armies dread that follow’d. | |
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6
(Pass—pass, ye proud brigades! | |
| So handsome, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; | |
| With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; | |
| —How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d! | 55 |
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| Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! | |
| Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! | |
| For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! | |
| Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing army! | |
| O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever! | 60 |
| O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! | |
| Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) | |
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7
But on these days of brightness, | |
| On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, | |
| Shall the dead intrude? | 65 |
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| Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; | |
| They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, | |
| And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon’s far margin. | |
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| Nor do I forget you, departed; | |
| Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones; | 70 |
| But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace—like pleasing phantoms, | |
| Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me. | |
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8
I saw the day, the return of the Heroes; | |
| (Yet the Heroes never surpass’d, shall never return; | |
| Them, that day, I saw not.) | 75 |
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| I saw the interminable Corps—I saw the processions of armies, | |
| I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions, | |
| Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. | |
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| No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans; | |
| Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop, | 80 |
| Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march, | |
| Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field. | |
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9
A pause—the armies wait; | |
| A million flush’d, embattled conquerors wait; | |
| The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn, | 85 |
| They melt—they disappear. | |
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| Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands! | |
| Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields; | |
| But here and hence your victory. | |
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| Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers! | 90 |
| Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly arms; | |
| Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West, | |
| With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars. | |
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10
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul! | |
| The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding; | 95 |
| The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. | |
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| All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me; | |
| I see the true arenas of my race—or first, or last, | |
| Man’s innocent and strong arenas. | |
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| I see the Heroes at other toils; | 100 |
| I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons. | |
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11
I see where America, Mother of All, | |
| Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long, | |
| And counts the varied gathering of the products. | |
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| Busy the far, the sunlit panorama; | 105 |
| Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, | |
| Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane; | |
| Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, | |
| Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, | |
| And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook, | 110 |
| And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes, | |
| And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass. | |
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12
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products! | |
| Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All, | |
| With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch’d you. | 115 |
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| Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well! | |
| The Mother of All—yet here, as ever, she watches you. | |
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| Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest, | |
| Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters, | |
| The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements: | 120 |
| Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes, | |
| The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines, | |
| The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw—the nimble work of the patent pitch-fork; | |
| Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser. | |
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| Beneath thy look, O Maternal, | 125 |
| With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest. | |
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| All gather, and all harvest; | |
| (Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security; | |
| Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.) | |
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13
Under Thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only; | 130 |
| Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every barbed spear, under thee; | |
| Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—each ear in its light-green sheath, | |
| Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns, | |
| Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs; | |
| Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas, | 135 |
| Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, | |
| Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders, | |
| Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the vines, | |
| Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South, | |
| Under the beaming sun, and under Thee. | 140 |