1
AFTER all, not to create only, or found only, | |
| But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded, | |
| To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free; | |
| To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire; | |
| Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate; | 5 |
| To obey, as well as command—to follow, more than to lead; | |
| These also are the lessons of our New World; | |
| —While how little the New, after all—how much the Old, Old World! | |
| |
| Long, long, long, has the grass been growing, | |
| Long and long has the rain been falling, | 10 |
| Long has the globe been rolling round. | |
| |
2
Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia; | |
| Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts, | |
| That matter of Troy, and Achilles’ wrath, and Eneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings; | |
| Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus; | 15 |
| Repeat at Jerusalem—place the notice high on Jaffa’s gate, and on Mount Moriah; | |
| The same on the walls of your Gothic European Cathedrals, and German, French and Spanish Castles; | |
| For know a better, fresher, busier sphere—a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. | |
| |
3
Responsive to our summons, | |
| Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination, | 20 |
| Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation, | |
| |
| She comes! this famous Female—as was indeed to be expected; | |
| (For who, so-ever youthful, ’cute and handsome, would wish to stay in mansions such as those, | |
| When offer’d quarters with all the modern improvements, | |
| With all the fun that ’s going—and all the best society?) | 25 |
| |
| She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown; | |
| I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance; | |
| I mark her step divine—her curious eyes a-turning, rolling, | |
| Upon this very scene. | |
| |
| The Dame of Dames! can I believe, then, | 30 |
| Those ancient temples classic, and castles strong and feudalistic, | |
| could none of them restrain her? | |
| Nor shades of Virgil and Dante—nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her? | |
| But that she ’s left them all—and here? | |
| |
| Yes, if you will allow me to say so, | 35 |
| I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see Her, | |
| The same Undying Soul of Earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s Expression, | |
| Out from her evolutions hither come—submerged the strata of her former themes, | |
| Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s—foundation of to-day’s; | |
| Ended, deceas’d, through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain; | 40 |
| Silent through time the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt—silent those century-baffling tombs; | |
| Closed for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors; | |
| Calliope’s call for ever closed—Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and dead; | |
| Seal’d the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana—ended the quest of the Holy Graal; | |
| Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind—extinct; | 45 |
| The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the sunrise; | |
| Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone—Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone, | |
| Palmerin, ogre, departed—vanish’d the turrets that Usk reflected, | |
| Arthur vanish’d with all his knights—Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad—all gone—dissolv’d utterly, like an exhalation; | |
| Pass’d! pass’d! for us, for ever pass’d! that once so mighty World—now void, inanimate, phantom World! | 50 |
| |
| Embroider’d, dazzling World! with all its gorgeous legends, myths, | |
| Its kings and barons proud—its priests, and warlike lords, and courtly dames; | |
| Pass’d to its charnel vault—laid on the shelf—coffin’d, with Crown and Armor on, | |
| Blazon’d with Shakspeare’s purple page, | |
| And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme. | 55 |
| |
| I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the Animus of all that World, | |
| Escaped, bequeath’d, vital, fugacious as ever, leaving those dead remains, and now this spot approaching, filling; | |
| —And I can hear what maybe you do not—a terrible aesthetical commotion, | |
| With howling, desperate gulp of “flower” and “bower,” | |
| With “Sonnet to Matilda’s Eyebrow” quite, quite frantic; | 60 |
| With gushing, sentimental reading circles turn’d to ice or stone; | |
| With many a squeak, (in metre choice,) from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, London; | |
| As she, the illustrious Emigré, (having, it is true, in her day, although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,) | |
| Making directly for this rendezvous—vigorously clearing a path for herself—striding through the confusion, | |
| By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d, | 65 |
| Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers, | |
| Smiling and pleased, with palpable intent to stay, | |
| She ’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware! | |
| |
4
But hold—don’t I forget my manners? | |
| To introduce the Stranger (what else indeed have I come for?) to thee, Columbia: | 70 |
| In Liberty’s name, welcome, Immortal! clasp hands, | |
| And ever henceforth Sisters dear be both. | |
| |
| Fear not, O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you, | |
| (I candidly confess, a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,) | |
| And yet the same old human race—the same within, without, | 75 |
| Faces and hearts the same—feelings the same—yearnings the same, | |
| The same old love—beauty and use the same. | |
| |
5
We do not blame thee, Elder World—nor separate ourselves from thee: | |
| (Would the Son separate himself from the Father?) | |
| Looking back on thee—seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through past ages bending, building, | 80 |
| We build to ours to-day. | |
| |
| Mightier than Egypt’s tombs, | |
| Fairer than Grecia’s, Roma’s temples, | |
| Prouder than Milan’s statued, spired Cathedral, | |
| More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps, | 85 |
| We plan, even now, to raise, beyond them all, | |
| Thy great Cathedral, sacred Industry—no tomb, | |
| A Keep for life for practical Invention. | |
| |
| As in a waking vision, | |
| E’en while I chant, I see it rise—I scan and prophesy outside and in, | 90 |
| Its manifold ensemble. | |
| |
6
Around a Palace, | |
| Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet, | |
| Earth’s modern Wonder, History’s Seven outstripping, | |
| High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron façades. | 95 |
| |
| Gladdening the sun and sky—enhued in cheerfulest hues, | |
| Bronze, lilac, robin’s-egg, marine and crimson, | |
| Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom, | |
| The banners of The States, the flags of every land, | |
| A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser Palaces shall cluster. | 100 |
| |
| Somewhere within the walls of all, | |
| Shall all that forwards perfect human life be started, | |
| Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited. | |
| |
| Here shall you trace in flowing operation, | |
| In every state of practical, busy movement, | 105 |
| The rills of Civilization. | |
| |
| Materials here, under your eye, shall change their shape, as if by magic; | |
| The cotton shall be pick’d almost in the very field, | |
| Shall be dried, clean’d, ginn’d, baled, spun into thread and cloth, before you: | |
| You shall see hands at work at all the old processes, and all the new ones; | 110 |
| You shall see the various grains, and how flour is made, and then bread baked by the bakers; | |
| You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and on till they become bullion; | |
| You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a composing stick is; | |
| You shall mark, in amazement, the Hoe press whirling its cylinders, shedding the printed leaves steady and fast: | |
| The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you. | 115 |
| |
| In large calm halls, a stately Museum shall teach you the infinite, solemn lessons of Minerals; | |
| In another, woods, plants, Vegetation shall be illustrated—in another Animals, animal life and development. | |
| |
| One stately house shall be the Music House; | |
| Others for other Arts—Learning, the Sciences, shall all be here; | |
| None shall be slighted—none but shall here be honor’d, help’d, exampled. | 120 |
| |
7
This, this and these, America, shall be your Pyramids and Obelisks, | |
| Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon, | |
| Your temple at Olympia. | |
| |
| The male and female many laboring not, | |
| Shall ever here confront the laboring many, | 125 |
| With precious benefits to both—glory to all, | |
| To thee, America—and thee, Eternal Muse. | |
| |
| And here shall ye inhabit, Powerful Matrons! | |
| In your vast state, vaster than all the old; | |
| Echoed through long, long centuries to come, | 130 |
| To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes, | |
| Practical, peaceful life—the people’s life—the People themselves, | |
| Lifted, illumin’d, bathed in peace—elate, secure in peace. | |
| |
8
Away with themes of war! away with War itself! | |
| Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return, that show of blacken’d, mutilated corpses! | 135 |
| That hell unpent, and raid of blood—fit for wild tigers, or for lop-tongued wolves—not reasoning men! | |
| And in its stead speed Industry’s campaigns! | |
| With thy undaunted armies, Engineering! | |
| Thy pennants, Labor, loosen’d to the breeze! | |
| Thy bugles sounding loud and clear! | 140 |
| |
| Away with old romance! | |
| Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts! | |
| Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme—the intrigues, amours of idlers, | |
| Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music slide; | |
| The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few, | 145 |
| With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers. | |
| |
9
To you, ye Reverent, sane Sisters, | |
| To this resplendent day, the present scene, | |
| These eyes and ears that like some broad parterre bloom up around, before me, | |
| I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for Art, | 150 |
| To exalt the present and the real, | |
| To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade, | |
| To sing, in songs, how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled; | |
| Boldly to thee, America, to-day! and thee, Immortal Muse! | |
| To practical, manual work, for each and all—to plough, hoe, dig, | 155 |
| To plant and tend the tree, the berry, the vegetables, flowers, | |
| For every man to see to it that he really do something—for every woman too; | |
| To use the hammer, and the saw, (rip or cross-cut,) | |
| To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting, | |
| To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter, | 160 |
| To invent a little—something ingenious—to aid the washing, cooking, cleaning, | |
| And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves. | |
| |
| I say I bring thee, Muse, to-day and here, | |
| All occupations, duties broad and close, | |
| Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation, | 165 |
| The old, old general burdens, interests, joys, | |
| The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife, | |
| The house-comforts—the house itself, and all its belongings, | |
| Food and its preservations—chemistry applied to it; | |
| Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded Man or Woman—the perfect, longeve Personality, | 170 |
| And helps its present life to health and happiness—and shapes its Soul, | |
| For the eternal Real Life to come. | |
| |
| With latest materials, works, | |
| Steam-power, the great Express lines, gas, petroleum, | |
| These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic’s delicate cable, | 175 |
| The Pacific Railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis tunnel; | |
| Science advanced, in grandeur and reality, analyzing every thing, | |
| This world all spann’d with iron rails—with lines of steamships | |
| threading every sea, | |
| Our own Rondure, the current globe I bring. | 180 |
| |
10
And thou, high-towering One—America! | |
| Thy swarm of offspring towering high—yet higher thee, above all towering, | |
| With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law; | |
| Thou Union, holding all—fusing, absorbing, tolerating all, | |
| Thee, ever thee, I bring. | 185 |
| |
| Thou—also thou, a world! | |
| With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant, | |
| Rounding by thee in One—one common orbic language, | |
| One common indivisible destiny and Union. | |
| |
11
And by the spells which ye vouchsafe, | 190 |
| To those, your ministers in earnest, | |
| I here personify and call my themes, | |
| To make them pass before ye. | |
| |
| Behold, America! (And thou, ineffable Guest and Sister!) | |
| For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands: | 195 |
| Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains, | |
| As in procession coming. | |
| |
| Behold! the sea itself! | |
| And on its limitless, heaving breast, thy ships: | |
| See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue! | 200 |
| See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port! | |
| See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! | |
| |
| Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west, | |
| Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen, | |
| Wielding all day their axes! | 205 |
| |
| Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels—thy oarsmen! | |
| Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms! | |
| |
| There by the furnace, and there by the anvil, | |
| Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths, swinging their sledges; | |
| Overhand so steady—overhand they turn and fall, with joyous clank, | 210 |
| Like a tumult of laughter. | |
| |
| Behold! (for still the procession moves,) | |
| Behold, Mother of All, thy countless sailors, boatmen, coasters! | |
| The myriads of thy young and old mechanics! | |
| Mark—mark the spirit of invention everywhere—thy rapid patents, | 215 |
| Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising; | |
| See, from their chimneys, how the tall flame-fires stream! | |
| |
| Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South, | |
| Thy wealthy Daughter-States, Eastern, and Western, | |
| The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, and the rest; | 220 |
| Thy limitless crops—grass, wheat, sugar, corn, rice, hemp, hops, | |
| Thy barns all fill’d—thy endless freight-trains, and thy bulging store-houses, | |
| The grapes that ripen on thy vines—the apples in thy orchards, | |
| Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes—thy coal—thy gold and silver, | |
| The inexhaustible iron in thy mines. | 225 |
| |
12
All thine, O sacred Union! | |
| Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines, | |
| City and State—North, South, item and aggregate, | |
| We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee! | |
| |
| Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all! | 230 |
| For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,) | |
| Without thee, neither all nor each, nor land, home, | |
| Ship, nor mine—nor any here, this day, secure, | |
| Nor aught, nor any day secure. | |
| |
13
And thou, thy Emblem, waving over all! | 235 |
| Delicate beauty! a word to thee, (it may be salutary;) | |
| Remember, thou hast not always been, as here to-day, so comfortably ensovereign’d; | |
| In other scenes than these have I observ’d thee, flag; | |
| Not quite so trim and whole, and freshly blooming, in folds of stainless silk; | |
| But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter’d staff, | 240 |
| Or clutch’d to some young color-bearer’s breast, with desperate hands, | |
| Savagely struggled for, for life or death—fought over long, | |
| ’Mid cannon’s thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell—and rifle-volleys cracking sharp, | |
| And moving masses, as wild demons surging—and lives as nothing risk’d, | |
| For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp’d in blood; | 245 |
| For sake of that, my beauty—and that thou might’st dally, as now, secure up there, | |
| Many a good man have I seen go under. | |
| |
14
Now here, and these, and hence, in peace all thine, O Flag! | |
| And here, and hence, for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them! | |
| And here and hence, O Union, all the work and workmen thine! | 250 |
| The poets, women, sailors, soldiers, farmers, miners, students thine! | |
| None separate from Thee—henceforth one only, we and Thou; | |
| (For the blood of the children—what is it only the blood Maternal? | |
| And lives and works—what are they all at last except the roads to Faith and Death?) | |
| |
| While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear Mother! | 255 |
| We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Thee; | |
| —Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross, or lucre—it is for Thee, the Soul, electric, spiritual! | |
| Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in Thee! Cities and States in Thee! | |
| Our freedom all in Thee! our very lives in Thee! | |
