Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth; Each of us here as divinely as any is here. 12. You Hottentot with clicking palate! haired hordes ! You woolly You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blooddrops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes ! I dare not refuse you the scope of the world, and of time and space, are upon me. You poor Koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality! You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California! You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lap! You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling, seeking your food! You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese! You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee! You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo! You bather bathing in the Ganges! You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Fejee-man! You peon of Mexico! you slave of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee! I do not prefer others so very much before you either; I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand; You will come forward in due time to my side. My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth; I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands; I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. 13. O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons; I think I have blown with you, O winds; O waters, I have fingered every shore with you. I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through ; I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high embedded rocks, to cry thence. Salut au monde ! What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself; All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself. Toward all, I raise high the perpendicular hand-I make the signal, To remain after me in sight for ever, For all the haunts and homes of men. SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE. I. WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan! Head from the mother's bowels drawn! Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one! Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown! Resting the grass amid and upon, To be leaned, and to lean on. Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes-masculine trades, sights and sounds; Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music; Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys. of the great organ. 2. Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind; Welcome are lands of pine and oak; Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig; Welcome are lands of gold; Welcome are lands of wheat and maize-welcome those of the grape; Welcome are lands of sugar and rice; Welcome the cotton-lands-welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato ; Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies; Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, open ings; Welcome the measureless grazing-lands-welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp; Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands; Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands; Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores; Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc; Lands of Iron! lands of the make of the axe! 3. The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it; The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space cleared for a garden, The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is lulled, The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea, The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam-ends, and the cutting-away of masts; The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses and barns; The remembered print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods, The disembarkation, the founding of a new city, The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it-the outset anywhere, The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Williamette, The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddlebags; The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces, The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves, The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint, The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification; The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer, Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's-work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock-boughs, and the bearskin; -The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere, Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises, according as they were prepared, The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curved limbs, Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving-in pins, holding on by posts and braces, The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe, The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed, Their postures, bringing their weapons downward on the bearers, The echoes resounding through the vacant building; The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way, The six framing-men, two in the middle, and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam, The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear, The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; -Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown appentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes; The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; -The city fireman-the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-packed square, The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water, The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets-the bringing-tobear of the hooks and ladders, and their execution, |