[Footnote 1: This clause is obviously imperfect in some respect: it is here reproducedverbatimfrom the American edition.]
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts are showered over with light—the daylight is lit with more volatile light—also the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many- fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty: the multiplication-table its—old age its—the carpenter's trade its—the grand opera its: the huge-hulled clean-shaped New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatched beauty—the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs, and the commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use—they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall not realise or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large. These American states, strong and healthy and accomplished, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work, nothingoutrécan be allowed; but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly told, there is no more need of romances.
The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by the justification of perfect personal candour. Then folks echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains. How beautiful is candour! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candour. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass has deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade—and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised—and that the soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled—and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff—and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs— these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains, and did well for himself and his family, and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clapboards around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil owned, and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlours, or shameless stuffing while others starve,—and all the loss of the bloom and odour of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naïveté, and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or majesty,—is the great fraud upon modern civilisation and forethought; blotching the surface and system which civilisation undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul. Still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for immortality. What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or seventy or eighty years, to wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself—all else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in a day or a month, or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is always as great and real as the direct. The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. Not one name of word or deed—not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rum-drinkers— not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder—no serpentine poison of those that seduce women—not the foolish yielding of women—not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means—not any nastiness of appetite— not any harshness of officers to men, or judges to prisoners, or fathers to sons, or sons to fathers, or of husbands to wives, or bosses to their boys—not of greedy looks or malignant wishes—nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves—ever is or ever can be stamped on the programme, but it is duly realised and returned, and that returned in further performances, and they returned again. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring arguments to hand or no. No specification is necessary—to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it for ever. If the savage or felon is wise, it is well—if the greatest poet or savant is wise, it is simply the same—if the President or chief justice is wise, it is the same—if the young mechanic or farmer is wise, it is no more or less. The interest will come round—all will come round. All the best actions of war and peace—all help given to relatives and strangers, and the poor and old and sorrowful, and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons—all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves—all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others take the seats of the boats—all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake—all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbours—all the vast sweet love and precious suffering of mothers—all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded—all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit—and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location—all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no—all that has at any time been well suggested out of the divine heart of man, or by the divinity of his mouth, or by the shaping of his great hands—and all that is well thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe, or on any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here—or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any one—these singly and wholly inured at their time, and inured now, and will inure always, to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring. Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The world does not so exist— no parts, palpable or impalpable, so exist—no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coining a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot…. Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular Sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement—knows that the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man who has not perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning—and that only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer long-lived things, and favours body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again—and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor avoids death.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides— and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love—and if he be not himself the age transfigured—and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development…. Still, the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in science, or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behaviour, fixed him or his so that either can be looked down upon? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle-aged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages, in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and realise and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring— he brings neither cessation nor sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained. Thenceforward is no rest: they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars, and learns one of the meanings. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos. The elder encourages the younger, and shows him how: they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait a while—perhaps a generation or two,—dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place—the gangs of kosmos and prophetsen masseshall take their place. A new order shall arise; and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend immortality, or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression—it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who, through all change of circumstance, was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance—it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible.
No great literature, nor any like style of behaviour or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of employed people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army or navy, nor spirit of legislation, or courts or police, or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea, for use to me, to-day, here? I know that what answers for me, an American, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? or is it without reference to universal needs? or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of special ranks? or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science and forms? Does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought, for life and death? Will it help breed one good-shaped man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate? Does it improve manners? Is it for the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the breasts of the mother of many children? Has it too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Does it look with the same love on the last-born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside of their own?
The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. The coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanour of the vital and great. The swarms of the polished, deprecating, and reflectors, and the polite, float off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite—they are not unappreciated—they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it—no disguise can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true, the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
[Script: Meantime, dear friend,Farewell, Walt Whitman.]
1.
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born,Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;After roaming many lands—lover of populous pavements;Dweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my city,—or on southern savannas;Or a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun—or a miner inCalifornia;Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from thespring;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 mightyNiagaraAware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains—the hirsute and strong-breasted bull;Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced—stars, rain, snow, myamaze;Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's,And heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from theswamp-cedars,Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
2.
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches,mystery,Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
This, then, is life;Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.
How curious! how real!Under foot the divine soil—over head the sun.
See, revolving, the globe;The ancestor-continents, away, grouped together;The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmusbetween.
See, vast trackless spaces;As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;Countless masses debouch upon them;They are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.
See, projected through time,For me an audience interminable.
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 turned sideways or backward towards me, to listen,With eyes retrospective towards me.
3.
Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!For you a programme of chants.
Chants of the prairies;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, equidistant,Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.
4.
In the Year 80 of the States,[3]My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parentsthe same,I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.)
I harbour, for good or bad—I permit to speak, at every hazard—Nature now without check, with original energy.
5.
Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you;And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovinglywith you.
I conned 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!
In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?Why, these are the children of the antique, to justify it.
6.
Dead poets, philosophs, priests,Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,Language-shapers on other shores,Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, waftedhither:I have perused it—own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)Think nothing can ever be greater—nothing can ever deserve more than itdeserves;Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,I stand in my place, with my own day, here.
Here lands female and male;Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world—here the flame ofmaterials;Here spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.
7.
The SOUL! For ever and for ever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than water ebbs and flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the mostspiritual poems;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 ofimmortality.
I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under anycircumstances be subjected to another State;And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by nightbetween all the States, and between any two of them;And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons withmenacing points,And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:And a song make I, of the One formed out of all;The fanged 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.
I will acknowledge contemporary lands;I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously everycity large and small;And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, uponland and sea—And I will report all heroism from an American pointof view;And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me—for I am determinedto tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.
I will sing the song of companionship;I will show what alone must finally compact these;I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating itin me;I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threateningto consume me;I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;I will give them complete abandonment;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?
8.
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;I advance from the peopleen massein their own spirit;Here is what sings unrestricted faith.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 isin fact no evil,Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or tome, as anything else.
I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion—I toogo to the wars;It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner'spealing shouts;Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.
Each is not for its own sake; I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain thefuture is.
I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be theirreligion;Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;Nor land, nor man or woman, without religion.
9.
What are you doing, young man?Are you so earnest—so given up to literature, science, art, amours?These ostensible realities, politics, points?Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?
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 ofthe earth,Any more than such are to religion.
10.
What do you seek, so pensive and silent?What do you need, Camerado?Dear son! do you think it is love?
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; But there is something else very great—it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.
11.
Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.
My comrade!For you, to share with me, two greatnesses—and a third one, risinginclusive and more resplendent,The greatness of Love and Democracy—and the greatness of Religion.
Mélange mine own! the unseen and the seen;Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we knownot of;Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;These selecting—these, in hints, demanded of me.
Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing meHas winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,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.
O such themes! Equalities!O amazement of things! O divine average!O warblings under the sun—ushered, 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 cheerfullypass them forward.
12.
As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briars, hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also; I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully singing.
And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was notthere only,Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.
13.
Democracy!Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.Ma femme!For the brood beyond us and of us,For those who belong here, and those to come,I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger andhaughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.
I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way, And your songs, outlawed offenders—for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.
I will make the true poem of riches,— To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and is not dropped by death.
I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all—and I will be the bardof personality;And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of theother;And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present—and can benone in the future;And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned tobeautiful results—and I will show that nothing can happen more beautifulthan death;And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events arecompact,And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each asprofound as any.
I will not make poems with reference to parts;But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, withreference to ensemble:And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to alldays;And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has referenceto the soul;Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is noone, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul.
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.
All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:How can the real body ever die, and be buried?
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 tofitting spheres,Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment ofdeath.
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.
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.
15.
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,Live words—words to the lands.O the lands! interlinked, 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 andgrape!Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of thosesweet-aired interminable plateaus!Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-westColorado 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 andConnecticut!Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and theinexperienced sisters!Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! thecompact!The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rateinclude 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, withirrepressible love,Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok'ssands,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[4]—each man and woman myneighbour,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 Canadian cheerily braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome to me,or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of theNarragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same—yet welcoming every newbrother;Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite withthe old ones;Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal—comingpersonally to you now;Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
16.
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.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 toyou—but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?No daintydolce affettuosoI;Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, 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.
17.
On my way a moment I pause;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.
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; 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.
18.
O expanding and swift! O henceforth,Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;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.
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.
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 flat-boat, 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; 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; See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered 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 returned; 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; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.
20.
O Camerado close!O you and me at last—and us two only.O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!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.
[Footnote 1: Paumanok is the native name of Long Island, State of New York.It presents a fish-like shape on the map.]
[Footnote 2: Mannahatta, or Manhattan, is (as many readers will know) NewYork.]
[Footnote 3: 1856.]
[Footnote 4: The poet here contemplates himself as yet living spiritually and in his poems after the death of the body, still a friend and brother to all present and future American lands and persons.]
[Footnote 5: New Hampshire.]
[Footnote 6: New York State.]
AMERICA always!Always our own feuillage!Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana!Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!Always California's golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains ofNew Mexico! Always soft-breathed Cuba!Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea—inseparable with theslopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas!The area the eighty-third year of these States[1]—the three and a halfmillions of square miles;The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—thethirty thousand miles of river navigation,The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches;Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy!Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada,the snows;Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringingthe huge oval lakes;Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed.Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering.On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboatswooding up:Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of thePotomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware;In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks thehills—or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done—they rest standing—they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes. On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree-tops, Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia waggoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great waggons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep- seines—the windlasses on shore worked by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees—There are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is covered with pine straw. —In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. —Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play—or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around. California life—the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume—the staunch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts—cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves. Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love, one Dilation or Pride. —In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting-out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march, The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies. —All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States— reminiscences, all institutions, All these States, compact—Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also. Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall-traveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside; The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is. The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of the States, each for itself—the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley— All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is. Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding, Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement—And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no more inevitably united part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil—these me,— These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?
[Footnote 1: 1858-59.]
I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and forthese chants—and now I have found it.It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither acceptnor reject;)It is no more in the legends than in all else;It is in the present—it is this earth to-day;It is in Democracy—in this America—the Old World also;It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day;It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics,creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,All for the average man of to-day.
Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises—I see it part away for moreaugust dramas;I see not America only—I see not only Liberty's nation but other nationsembattling;I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see thesolidarity of races;I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to themclosed?I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Lawby her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste;—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions!I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;I see the landmarks of European kings removed;I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way;Never were such sharp questions asked as this day;Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God.Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonises the Pacific,the archipelagoes;With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesaleengines of war,With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,all lands;—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under theseas?Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?Is humanity formingen masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill the days and nights.Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it,is full of phantoms;Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;This incredible rush and heat—this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, Oyears!Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether Isleep or wake!)The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.
Of these years I sing, How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions; How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity; How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States—or see freedom or spirituality—or hold any faith in results. But I see the athletes—and I see the results glorious and inevitable—and they again leading to other results; How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves—And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions. And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too, serve—and how every fact serves, And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.
1.
Come closer to me;Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.
This is unfinished business with me—How is it with you?(I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)
Male and Female! I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.
American masses! I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me—I know that it is good for you to do so.
2.
This is the poem of occupations;In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find thedevelopments,And find the eternal meanings.Workmen and Workwomen!Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me,what would it amount to?Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, whatwould it amount to?Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?
The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms;A man like me, and never the usual terms.
Neither a servant nor a master am I;I take no sooner a large price than a small price—I will have my own,whoever enjoys me;I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.
If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her—why I often meet strangers in the street, and love them.
Why, what have you thought of yourself?Is it you then that thought yourself less?Is it you that thought the President greater than you?Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?
Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief,Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never sawyour name in print,Do you give in that you are any less immortal?
3.
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchableand untouching;It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you arealive or no;I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them.
The wife—and she is not one jot less than the husband;The daughter—and she is just as good as the son;The mother—and she is every bit as much as the father.
Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,All these I see—but nigher and farther the same I see;None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.I bring what you much need, yet always have,Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer thevalue itself.
There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;It is not what is printed, preached, discussed—it eludes discussion andprint;It is not to be put in a book—it is not in this book;It is for you, whoever you are—it is no farther from you than your hearingand sight are from you;It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest—it is ever provoked by them.
You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it; You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there; Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock.
4.
The sun and stars that float in the open air;The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it—surely the drift of them issomething grand!I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it ishappiness,And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,or reconnoissance,And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, andwithout luck must be a failure for us,And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.
The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed thatwith perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride andoutstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders thatfill each minute of time for ever,What have you reckoned them for, camerado?Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of astore?Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or alady's leisure?
Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans? Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts? Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names? Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture itself?
Old institutions—these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures—will we rate them so high? Will we rate our cash and business high?—I have no objection; I rate them as high as the highest—then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.
We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand;I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are;I am this day just as much in love with them as you;Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth.
We consider Bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine;I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;It is not they who give the life—it is you who give the life;Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than theyare shed out of you.
5.
When the psalm sings, instead of the singer;When the script preaches, instead of the preacher;When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved thesupporting desk;When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touchmy body back again;When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and childconvince;When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman'sdaughter;When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendlycompanions;I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men andwomen like you.The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;The President is there in the White House for you—it is not you who arehere for him;The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not you here for them;The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going andcoming of commerce and mails, are all for you.
List close, my scholars dear!All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you;All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are talliedin you;The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, isin you this hour, and myths and tales the same;If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would bevacuums.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?
All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by theinstruments;It is not the violins and the cornets—it is not the oboe nor the beatingdrums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweetromanza—nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women'schorus,It is nearer and farther than they.
6.
Will the whole come back then?Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is therenothing greater or more?Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul?
Strange and hard that paradox true I give;Objects gross and the unseen Soul are one.
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-dressing,Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walksby flaggers,The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,Coal-mines, and all that is down there,—the lamps in the darkness, echoes,songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking throughsmutched faces,Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks—men aroundfeeling the melt with huge crowbars—lumps of ore, the duecombining of ore, limestone, coal—the blast-furnace and thepuddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last—the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, cleanshaped T-rail for railroads;Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, thegreat mills and factories;Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door lintels—the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum,the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire under the kettle,The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, themould of the moulder, the working knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of the rigger, grappler,sail-maker, block-maker,Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mâché, colours, brushes, brush-making,glaziers' implements,The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter andglasses, the shears and flat-iron,The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter andstool, the writing-pen of quill or metal—the making of all sortsof edged tools,The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done bybrewers, also by wine-makers, also vinegar-makers,Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling,sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking—electro-plating,electrotyping, stereotyping,Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam waggons,The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray;Pyrotechny, letting off coloured fireworks at night, fancy figures andjets,Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, thebutcher in his killing-clothes,The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub,gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteouswinter-work of pork-packing,Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the barrels and the halfand quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharvesand levees,The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats,canals;The daily routine of your own or any man's life—the shop, yard, store, orfactory;These shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, yourdaily life!In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more than youestimated, and far less also;In them realities for you and me—in them poems for you and me;In them, not yourself—you and your soul enclose all things, regardless ofestimation;In them the development good—in them, all themes and hints.
I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile—I do not advise you to stop;I do not say leadings you thought great are not great;But I say that none lead to greater than those lead to.
7.
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place—not for anotherhour, but this hour;Man in the first you see or touch—always in friend, brother, nighestneighbour—Woman in mother, sister, wife;The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and stronglife,And all else giving place to men and women like you.