Year of Meteors.

(1859-60.)

YEAR of meteors! brooding year!

I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the

scaffold in Virginia,

(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd, I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold;)

I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States, The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships

and their cargoes,

The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold, Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I welcome give,

And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young prince of England!

(Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with your cortege of nobles?

There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;) Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my

bay,

Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she

was 600 feet long,

Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing;

Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in

heaven,

Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads,

(A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads,

Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone ;)

Of such, and fitful as they, I sing with gleams from them would

I gleam and patch these chants,

Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good - year of

forebodings!

Year of comets and meteors transient and strange-lo! even

here one equally transient and strange !

As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is

this chant,

What am I myself but one of your meteors?

With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past

ages

With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I

am,

With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome,

With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon,

With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and

journeys,

With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour,

the crusader, and the monk,

With those old continents whence we have come to this new

continent,

With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,

With the fading religions and priests,

With the small shores we look back to from our own large and

present shores,

With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at

these years,

You and me arrived-America arrived and making this year,

This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

2

O but it is not the years-it is I, it is You,

We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,

We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily

include them and more,

We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid

evil and good,

All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,

The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.

As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)

I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,

I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no

part.

(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?

[tion.)

Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recogni

I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,

I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god,

I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, with

out exception,

I assert that all past days were what they must have been,

And that they could nohow have been better than they were,
And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,
And that to-day and America could nohow be better than they

[are.

3

In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past, And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time.

I know that the past was great and the future will be great, And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man's sake, your sake if you are he,)

And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races,

And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come.

LEAVES OF GRASS