Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,
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,

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,

I merely thee ejaculate !

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,

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 cer

tain,

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,

But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!) 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 full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans,

These these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy.

6

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee,

Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,

Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,

To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom, Set in the sky of Law.)

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith,

Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd,

The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare,

Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale.

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 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,

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.

The soul, its destinies, the real real,

(Purport of all these apparitions of the real ;)

In thee America, the soul, its destinies,

Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!

By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd, (by these thyself solidifying,)

Thou mental, moral orb thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!
The Present holds thee not-for such vast growth as thine,
For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine,

The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.

A PAUMANOK PICTURE.

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting-they discover a thick school of mossbonkers- they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,

The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankledeep in the water, pois'd on strong legs,

The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them, Strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water, the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers.

FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT.

THOU ORB ALOFT FULL-DAZZLING.

THOU Orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon !
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.

Hear me illustrious!

Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,

Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy touching-distant beams enough,

Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.

(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive, I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,

Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voiceand thou O sun,

As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,

I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,

O'er myriad farms, o'er lands and waters North and South,

O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,

O'er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas,

Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,

Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,

Strike through these chants.

Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these, Prepare the later afternoon of me myself-prepare my lengthening shadows,

Prepare my starry nights.

FACES.

I

SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country by-road, lo, such faces!

Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,

The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,

The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges broad at the back-top,

The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens,

The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face,

The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face,

The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children,

The face of an amour, the face of veneration,

The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,

The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,

A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper,

A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces and faces and faces,

I see them and complain not, and am content with all.

2

Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man,

Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,

Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage,

Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
Its sleepy and wabbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.