With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant; Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou carriest great companions, Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee, And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 5 Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes, Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky, Emblem of general maternity lifted above all, 60 Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons, Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life, World of the real-world of the twain in one, World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone, Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials, By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent, Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here (The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come), Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I define thee, 70 How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past, I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe, But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee, I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, Thee in thy future, Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit, Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all, Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity, 81 Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd so long upon the mind of man, The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man; Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East, (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son, endear'd alike, forever equal,) Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain, Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest material civilization must remain in vain,) Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship thee in no single bible, saviour, merely, Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any. (Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century's visible growth, 1 90 But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!) 1 Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students, born of thee, Thee in thy democratic fêtes en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, Thee in thy ultimata (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied), Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, In thy resplendent coming literati, thy fulllung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, These! these in thee (certain to come), today I prophesy. 6 Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee, 1 The two lines in parenthesis were added in 1881. Not for success alone, Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over, (Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, For the tug and mortal strain of nations 110 come at last in prosperous peace, not war ;) In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic,1 But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be, They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee, While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, Equable, natural, mystical Union thou (the mortal with immortal blent), Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind, The soul, its destinies. 120 The soul, its destinies, the real real, (Purport of all these apparitions of the real ;) In thee America, the soul, its destinies, 1 Compare Democratic Vistas, pp. 203-208; and Two Rivulets, 1876, the prose section Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death, I take my way along the island's edge, 2 It was near the close of his indomitable and pious life on his last voyage when nearly 70 years of age that Columbus, to save his two remaining ships from foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, had to run them ashore on the Island of Jamaicawhere, laid up for a long and miserable year-1503he was taken very sick, had several relapses, his men revolted, and death seem'd daily imminent; though he was eventually rescued, and sent home to Spain to die, unrecognized, neglected and in want. . . . It is only ask'd, as preparation and atmosphere for the following lines, that the bare authentic facts be recall'd and realized, and nothing contributed by the fancy. See, the Antillean Island, with its florid skies and rich foliage and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and the hulls of the ships in the distance. See, the figure of the great Admiral, walking the beach, as a stage, in this sublimest tragedy for what tragedy, what poem, so piteous and majestic as the real scene? - and hear him uttering -as his mystical and religious soul surely utter'd, the ideas following-perhaps, in their equiv alents, the very words. (WHITMAN.) The end I know not, it is all in Thee, Or small or great I know not - haply what broad fields, what lands, Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know, Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee, Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools, Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there. One effort more, my altar this bleak sand; That Thou O God my life hast lighted, 41 With of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, ray My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving? What do I know of life? what of myself? I know not even my own work past or present, Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me, Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, Mocking, perplexing me. 60 And these things I see suddenly, what mean they? As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes, Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, And on the distant waves sail countless ships, And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me. 1874. (1876.) COME, SAID MY SOUL1 COME, SAID MY SOUL, SUCH VERSES FOR MY BODY LET US WRITE, (FOR WE ARE ONE), THAT SHOULD I AFTER DEATH INVISIBLY WHEN the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night), saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; - Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them. 1876. TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee), Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast). Far, far at sea, After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, With reappearing day as now so happy and serene, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings), To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, What joys! what joys were thine ! THE OX-TAMER 1876. IN a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them, He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard, The bullock's head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides how soon this tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign) see you! the bright hides, See, the two with stars on their foreheads see, the round bodies and broad backs, - How straight and square they stand on their legs - what fine sagacious eyes! THEE for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front, Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering; emblem of motion and power-pulse of the continent, Type of the modern 1 Contrast Wordsworth's attitude toward the railroad and its invasion of natural scenes! And compare Whitman's Specimen Days, April 29, 1879: 'It was a happy thought to build the Hudson River railroad right along the shore. . . . I see, hear, the locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly, away off there, night and day-less than a mile distant, and in full view by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has its special character-beauties.' 1876, vol. i, p. 369. |