As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea;

As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago—whatever streets I have roamed;

Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.

4.

I sing the Equalities;

I sing the endless finales of things;

I say Nature continues—Glory continues;

I praise with electric voice:

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you unmitigated adoration.

LONGINGS FOR HOME.

MAGNET South! O glistening, perfumed South!

my South!

O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! good and

evil! O all dear to me!

O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things, and the trees where I was born,* the grains, plants,

rivers;

Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers, where they flow distant over flats of silvery sands or through

swamps;

Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine—

O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their banks again.

Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on Okeechobee I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings or dense forests.

I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw tree, and the blossoming titi.

Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up the Carolinas;

I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto.

I pass rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland;

* These expressions cannot be understood in a literal sense, for Whitman was born, not in the South, but in the State of New York. The precise sense to be attached to them may be open to some difference of opinion.

O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar,

hemp !

The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;

The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness,

(Here in these dense swamps the free-booter carries

his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut;)

O the strange fascination of these half-known, half

impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake;

The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the racoon, the

opossum ;

A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn —slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels— with beautiful ears, each well-sheathed in its husk; An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou. my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart!

O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Caro

linian!

O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!

APPEARANCES.

F the terrible doubt of appearances,

OF

Of the uncertainty after all—that we may be deluded,

That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after

all,

That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable

only,

May-be the things I perceive the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,

The skies of day and night—colours, densities, forms—

May-be these are (as doubtless they are) only

apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known;

(How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me!

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows,

aught of them!)

May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view

-And might prove (as of course they would) naught of what they appear, or naught any how,

from entirely changed points of view ;

—To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answered by my lovers, my dear friends.

When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the hand,

When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words

and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom—I am silent—I require nothing further,

I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity beyond the grave;

But I walk or sit indifferent—I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

R

Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior—I will tell you what to say

of me;

Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the

tenderest lover,

U