O all, all inseparable-ages, ages, ages! O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for any reason whatever! O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death! O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted! O workmen and work women forever for me! O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever for me! o I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools! O you coarse and wilful! I love you! O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and sunny airs! O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die! O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be your born poet! O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am your poet, because I am part of you; O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents! O vast preparation for These States! O years! O what is now being sent forward thousands of years to come! O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith! To promulge real things! to journey through all The States! O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated adoration! O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers! O for native songs! carpenter's, boatman's, ploughman's songs! shoemaker's songs! O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic! O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will and you O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent, darting and burning; O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light! with pouring glories! O copious! O hitherto unequalled! O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to O my soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless! O voices of greater orators! I pause you! -I listen for O you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority! O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you! Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on! O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet! O present! I return while yet I may to you! 1. 1. A NATION announcing itself, (many in one,) I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, I reject none, accept all, reproduce all in my own forms. 2. A breed whose testimony is behavior, What we are WE ARE -nativity is answer enough to objections; We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, We are executive in ourselves We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves, Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only. 3. Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme? There can be any number of Supremes-One does not countervail another, any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another. 4. All is eligible to all, All is for individuals — All is for you, No condition is prohibited, not God's or any, 5. All comes by the body-only health puts you rapport with the universe. 6. Produce great persons, the rest follows. 7. How dare a sick man, or an obedient man, write poems for These States? Which is the theory or book that, for our purposes, is not diseased? 8. Piety and conformity to them that like! Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like! I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, to leap from their seats and contend for their lives. 9. I am he who goes through the streets with a barbed tongue, questioning every one I meet tioning you up there now: -ques Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense? 10. Are you, or would you be, better than all that has ever been before? If you would be better than all that has ever been before, come listen to me, and not otherwise. 11. Fear grace - Fear delicatesse, Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice, Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men. 12. Ages, precedents, poems, have long been accumulating undirected materials, America brings builders, and brings its own styles. 13. Mighty bards have done their work, and passed to other spheres, One work forever remains, the work of surpassing all they have done. 14. America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards, Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, Sees itself promulger of men and women, initiates the true use of precedents, Does not repel them or the past, or what they have produced under their forms, or amid other politics, or amid the idea of castes, or the old religions, Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house, Perceives that it waits a little while in the door. that it was fittest for its days, That its life has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches, And that he shall be fittest for his days. 15. Any period, one nation must lead, One land must be the promise and reliance of the future. 16. These States are the amplest poem, Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations, Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses, carelessly faithful of particulars, Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the Soul loves, Here the flowing trains here the crowds, equality, diversity, the Soul loves. 17. Race of races, and bards to corroborate! Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his west-bred face, To him the hereditary countenance bequeathed, both mother's and father's, His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, Built of the common stock, having room for far and near, Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land, Attracting it body and Soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, Plunging his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits, Making its geography, cities, beginnings, events, glories, defections, diversities, vocal in him, Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes -Missouri, Columbia, Ohio, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him, If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south, Spanning between them east and west, and touching whatever is between them, Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, cypress, hickory, lime-tree, cotton-wood, tulip-tree, cactus, tamarind, orange, magnolia, persimmon, Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp, He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from the boughs, Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, Through him flights, songs, screams, answering those |