1 There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all directions is cover'd with pine straw; In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking, In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse, On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks, 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 odor, 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 eyes around; California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume, the stanch 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, cotton bales 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 indorse ment, 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, institutions, All these States compact, every square mile of these States without excepting a particle ; Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, 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 fall traveler 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 roadside, The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan ; 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 moneymakers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars firm earth, the lands, my lands, on the O lands all so dear to me - what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it at random in these songs, 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, 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 Paumanok, 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 reliev'd by other sentinels and I feeding and taking turns with the rest, In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner'd 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, corner'd 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 out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains, Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil these me, -- These affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States? A SONG OF JOYS. To make the most jubilant song! Full of music full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! Full of common employments full of grain and trees. O for the voices of animals O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for the dropping of raindrops in a song! O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song! 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. O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive ! To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing locomotive ! To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance. O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides! The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness of the woods, The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon. 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. O the fireman's joys! I hear the alarm at dead of night, I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run ! The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure. O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent. O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods. O the mother's joys! The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded life. O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation, The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony. O to go back to the place where I was born, 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. O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast, To continue and be employ'd there all my life, 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; I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man ; 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 accompanying me, My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they love to be with me, By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me. 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 boil'd till their color becomes scarlet. Another time mackerel-taking, Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the brown-faced crew; Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils of slender rope, In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions. O boating on the rivers, The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers, The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars, The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at evening. (O something pernicious and dread! Something far away from a puny and pious life! Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.) |