You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias! You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa! You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo ! All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia indifferent of place! All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me! And ycu, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same! Health to you! Good will to you all America sent, For we acknowledge you all and each. 31. Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless. - from me and each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allowed the eternal purport of the earth, 32. You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes! you white or black owners of slaves! You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blooddrops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes! You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp! 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 Fegee-man! You peon of Mexico! you Russian serf! 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.) 33. 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. 34. O vapors! 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. 35. 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 highest embedded rocks, to cry thence. 36. 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. 37. Toward all, I raise high the perpendicular hand—I make the signal, To remain after me in sight forever, For all the haunts and homes of men. POEM OF JOYS. 1. O To make a most jubilant poem! O full of music! Full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! O full of common employments! Full of grain and trees. 2. O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem ! O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a poem. 3. O to be on the sea! the wind, the wide waters around; O to sail in a ship under full sail at sea. 4. O the joy of my spirit! It is uncaged! It darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time -I will have thousands of globes, and all time. steam-whistle To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek — the 6. O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys! The saddle- the gallop. the pressure upon the seat the cool gurgling by the ears and hair. The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure, 8. O the joy of the strong-brawned fighter, towering in the arena, in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent. 9. O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human Soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods. 10. O the mother's joys! The watching the endurance - the precious lovethe anguish the patiently yielded life. 11. O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation, The joy of soothing and pacifying—the joy of concord and harmony. 12. O to go back to the place where I was born! O to hear the birds sing once more! To ramble about the house and barn, and over the fields, once more, And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more. 13. O male and female! O the presence of women! (I swear, nothing is more mate! O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him who, I fear, is indifferent to me. 14. O the streets of cities! The flitting faces the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot tell how welcome they are to me; O of men of women toward me as I pass - The memory of only one look-the boy lingering and waiting. 15. O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast! O to continue and be employed there all my life! O the briny and damp smell the shore- the salt weeds exposed at low water, The work of fishermen the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher. 16. O it is I! I come with my clam-rake and spade! I come with my eel-spear; Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats, I laugh and work with them I joke at my work, like a mettlesome young man. 17. In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice -I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice; Behold me, well-clothed, going gayly, or returning in the afternoon - my brood of tough boys accom panying me, My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with none else so well as they love to be with me, By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me. 18. Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots, where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys ;) O the sweetness of the Fifth Month morning upon the water, as I row, just before sunrise, toward the buoys; I pull the wicker pots up slantingly - the dark green lobsters are desperate with their claws, as I take them out I insert wooden pegs in the joints of their pincers, I go to all the places, one after another, and then row back to the shore, There, in a huge kettle of boiling water, the lobsters shall be boiled till their color becomes scarlet. 19. Or, another time, mackerel-taking, Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; |