Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States, Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands. Interlink'd, food-yielding lands! Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice! Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple and the grape ! Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus ! Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie ! Land of the eastern Chesapeake ! land of the Delaware! Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and Connecticut ! Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks! Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones! The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bonylimb'd! The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse ! the compact ! The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian! O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with perfect love! I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another ! O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with irrepressible love, Walking New England, a friend, a traveler, Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on Paumanok's sands, Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town, Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts, Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls, Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor, The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her, The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them, Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in come to me, Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite Sian, 28 Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every new brother, Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they unite with the old ones, Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal, coming personally to you now, Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me. 15 With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on. For your life adhere to me, (I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you, but what of that? Must not Nature be persuaded many times?) No dainty dolce affettuoso I, Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived, On my way a moment I pause, 16 Here for you! and here for America ! Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I harbinge glad and sublime, And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. The red aborigines, Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names, Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla, Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. Expanding and swift, henceforth, 17 Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious, New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts. These, my voice announcing — I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms. 18 See, steamers steaming through my poems, See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing, See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village, See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores, See, pastures and forests in my poems see, animals wild and tame see, beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass, See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce, See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press-see, the electric telegraph stretching across the continent, See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching, pulses of Europe duly return'd, See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle, See, ploughmen ploughing farms-see, miners digging minessee, the numberless factories, See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools see from among them superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses, See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me wellbelov'd, close-held by day and night, Hear the loud echoes of my songs there read the hints come at last. 19 O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only. O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly! O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild! O hand in hand-O wholesome pleasure and lover! O one more desire O to haste firm holding — to haste, haste on with me. I SONG OF MYSELF. I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, L ר. I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and thei parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. 2 Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. ୮ The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? reckon❜d Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 3 I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world. |