Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle others sit on the gunwale, smoking and

talking;

Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress tree, and the juniper tree. —Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women;

Children at play—or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his

sleep!)

The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around.

California life—the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude

costume the staunch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path;

Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts—cottonbales piled on banks and wharves.

Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love, one Dilation or Pride.

In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines the calumet, the pipe of good-will,

arbitration, and endorsement,

The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth,

The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations,

The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march,

The single-file—the swinging hatchets the surprise and slaughter of enemies.

—All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States reminiscences, all institutions,

All these States, compact—Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also.

Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields,

Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air;

The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the falltraveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring;

The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the road-side

The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charles

ton, New Orleans, San Francisco,

The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan ;

Evening—me in my room—the setting sun,

The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is.

The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners;

Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness —the individuality of the States, each for itself— the money-makers;

Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All certainties,

The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands!

O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is.

Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping,

with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding,

Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running;

Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paw. manok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants;

Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement— And I triumphantly twittering;

The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed— the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest;

In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives And I, plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate;

In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops,

And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,

Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no more inevitably united part to part, and

made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made One identity;

Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil— these me,—

These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you?

Whoever you are! how can I but offer you

that you also be eligible as I am?

divine leaves,

How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?

I

THE PAST—PRESENT.

WAS looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for these chants—and now I have found it.

It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject ;)