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When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements, When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love, When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell I love spit their salutes, When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,

When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colors,

When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,

When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,

When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest,

When the façades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,

When the guests from the islands advance,

when the pageant moves forward visible, When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands of years answers,

I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.

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Superb-faced Manhattan !

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Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.

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See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,

As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.

For not the envoys nor the tann'd Japanee from his island only,2

Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead,

The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,

The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,

The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients,

Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in the pageantprocession.

Geography, the world, is in it,

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The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,

The coast you henceforth are facingyou Libertad! from your Western golden shores,

The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are curiously here,

The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the sides of at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama, Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,

The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors, Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all, Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,

From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,

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From the southern peninsulas and the demicontinental islands, from Malaysia, These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and are seiz'd by me,

In the original edition this line reads: —

Not the errand-bearing princes only, nor the tann'd Japanes only.

In the original edition these two lines read:The singing-girl and the dancing-girl- the ecstatic person -the divine Buddha;

The secluded Emperors - Confucius himself the great poets and heroes the warriors, the castes, all

And I am seiz'd by them, and friendlily held by them,

Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.

For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,

I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,

I chant the world on my Western sea,

I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,

I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me, I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,

I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of seaislands,

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My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,

My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind, Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh'd,

Lives, works resumed- - the object I know not but the old, the Asiatic renew'd as it must be,

Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.

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And you Libertad of the world!

You shall sit in the middle well-pois'd thousands and thousands of years, As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,

As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her eldest son to you. The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, 70 The ring is circled, the journey is done, The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box.

Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,

Be considerate with her now and ever hot

Libertad, for you are all,

Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you,

Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.

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Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

1 THE EAST. What a subject for a poem! Indeed, where else a more pregnant, more splendid one? Where one more idealistic-real, more subtle, more sensuous-delicate? The East, answering all lands, all ages, peoples; touching all senses, here, immediate, now and yet so indescribably far off-such retrospect! The East- long-stretching- - so losing itself the orient, the gardens of Asia, the womb of history and song-forth-issuing all those strange, dim cavalcades

Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,

Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
With sunburnt visage, intense soul and glittering eyes.

Always the East- old, how incalculably old! And yet here the same-ours yet, fresh as a rose, to every morning, every life, to-day- and always will be. (WHITMAN, Specimen Days. Complete Prose Works, pp. 112, 113.)

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To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,

To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,

To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs (they are inimitable); Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas to sing theirs,

To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs,

To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;

To sing first (to the tap of the war-drum if need be),

The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,

And then the song of each member of these States.

ARM'D

EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE

1865.

year year of the struggle, No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,

Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano,

But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder,

With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in the belt at your side,

As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the continent, Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,

Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as

one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan,

Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Alleghanies, Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river, Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain top,

Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons,

robust year,

Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again,

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