O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice, O harvest of my lands-O boundless summer growths, O lavish brown parturient earth-O infinite teeming womb, 2 Ever upon this stage, Is acted God's calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The liliput countless armies of the grass, The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes, The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. 3 Fecund America-to-day, Thou art all over set in births and joys! [garment, Thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions, A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne, VOL. II.-9 As some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou ridest into port, As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from the earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of thee; Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty, Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns, Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East and lookest West, Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million farms, and missest nothing, Thou all-acceptress-thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as God is hospitable.) 4 When late I sang sad was my voice, Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war; In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood, Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying. But now I sing not war, Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies? Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow'd. (Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs, With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets; How elate I stood and watch'd you, where starting off you march'd. Pass then rattle drums again, For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army, O my land's maim'd darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch, On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, Should the dead intrude? Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature, They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass, And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin. Nor do I forget you Departed, Nor in winter or summer my lost ones, But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace, like pleasing phantoms, Your memories rising glide silently by me. 6 I saw the day the return of the heroes, (Yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return, Them that day I saw not.) I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies, I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions, Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. No holiday soldiers-youthful, yet veterans, Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop, Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march, Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field. A pause the armies wait, A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait, The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn, They melt, they disappear. Exult O lands! victorious lands! Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields, But here and hence your victory. Melt, melt away ye armies-disperse ye blue-clad soldiers, Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, 7 Loud O my throat, and clear O soul! The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding, All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me, I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last, I see the heroes at other toils, I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons. I see where the Mother of All, With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long, Busy the far, the sunlit panorama, Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes, And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass. 8 Toil on heroes! harvest the products! Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All, With dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you. |