[{"Unnamed: 0":0,"Keys":"STARTING FROM PAUMANOK.\n","Values":" Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,where I was born,\n Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;\n After roaming many lands\u2014lover of populous pavements;\n Dweller in Mannahatta,city of ships, my city,\u2014or on southern savannas;\n Or a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun\u2014or a miner in\n         California;\n Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the\n         spring;\n Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,\n Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;\n Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri\u2014aware of mighty\n         Niagara\n Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains\u2014the hirsute and strong-\n         breasted bull;\n Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced\u2014stars, rain, snow, my\n         amaze;\n Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's,\n And heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the\n         swamp-cedars,\n Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.\n Victory, union, faith, identity, time,\n Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches,\n         mystery,\n Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.\n This, then, is life;\n Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.\n How curious! how real!\n Under foot the divine soil\u2014over head the sun.\n See, revolving, the globe;\n The ancestor-continents, away, grouped together;\n The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus\n         between.\n See, vast trackless spaces;\n As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;\n Countless masses debouch upon them;\n They are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.\n See, projected through time,\n For me an audience interminable.\n With firm and regular step they wend\u2014they never stop,\n Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;\n One generation playing its part, and passing on,\n Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn,\n With faces turned sideways or backward towards me, to listen,\n With eyes retrospective towards me.\n Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;\n Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!\n For you a programme of chants.\n Chants of the prairies;\n Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican Sea;\n Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota;\n Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equidistant,\n Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.\n In the Year 80 of the States, My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,\n Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents\n         the same,\n I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,\n Hoping to cease not till death.\n Creeds and schools in abeyance,\n (Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.)\n I harbour, for good or bad\u2014I permit to speak, at every hazard\u2014\n Nature now without check, with original energy.\n Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!\n Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;\n Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you;\n And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly\n         with you.\n I conned old times;\n I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:\n Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!\n In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?\n Why, these are the children of the antique, to justify it.\n Dead poets, philosophs, priests,\n Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,\n Language-shapers on other shores,\n Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,\n I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted\n         hither:\n I have perused it\u2014own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)\n Think nothing can ever be greater\u2014nothing can ever deserve more than it\n         deserves;\n Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,\n I stand in my place, with my own day, here.\n Here lands female and male;\n Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world\u2014here the flame of\n         materials;\n Here spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,\n The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;\n The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,\n Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.\n The  SOUL!  For  ever  and  for  ever\u2014longer  than  soil  is  brown  and  solid\u2014longer  than  water  ebbs  and\n flows.\n I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most\n         spiritual poems;\n And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,\n For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of\n         immortality.\n I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any\n         circumstances be subjected to another State;\n And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night\n         between all the States, and between any two of them;\n And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with\n         menacing points,\n And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:\n And a song make I, of the One formed out of all;\n The fanged and glittering one whose head is over all;\n Resolute, warlike one, including and over all;\n However high the head of any else, that head is over all.\n I will acknowledge contemporary lands;\n I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every\n         city large and small;\n And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon\n         land and sea\u2014And I will report all heroism from an American point\n         of view;\n And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me\u2014for I am determined\n         to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.\n I will sing the song of companionship;\n I will show what alone must finally compact these;\n I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it\n         in me;\n I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening\n         to consume me;\n I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;\n I will give them complete abandonment;\n I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love;\n For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy?\n And who but I should be the poet of comrades?\n I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;\n I advance from the people en masse in their own spirit;\n Here is what sings unrestricted faith.\n Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;\n I make the poem of evil also\u2014I commemorate that part also;\n I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is\u2014And I say there is\n         in fact no evil,\n Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to\n         me, as anything else.\n I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion\u2014I too\n         go to the wars;\n It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner's\n         pealing shouts;\n Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.\n Each is not for its own sake; I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's sake.\n I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;\n None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;\n None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the\n         future is.\n I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their\n         religion;\n Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;\n Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;\n Nor land, nor man or woman, without religion.\n What are you doing, young man?\n Are you so earnest\u2014so given up to literature, science, art, amours?\n These ostensible realities, politics, points?\n Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?\n It is well\u2014Against such I say not a word\u2014I am their poet also;\n But behold! such swiftly subside\u2014burnt up for religion's sake;\n For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of\n         the earth,\n Any more than such are to religion.\n What do you seek, so pensive and silent?\n What do you need, Camerado?\n Dear son! do you think it is love?\n Listen, dear son\u2014listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess\n \u2014and yet it satisfies\u2014it is great; But there is something else very great\u2014it makes the whole coincide; It,\n magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.\n Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,\n The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.\n My comrade!\n For you, to share with me, two greatnesses\u2014and a third one, rising\n         inclusive and more resplendent,\n The greatness of Love and Democracy\u2014and the greatness of Religion.\n M\u00e9lange mine own! the unseen and the seen;\n Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;\n Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;\n Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we know\n         not of;\n Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;\n These selecting\u2014these, in hints, demanded of me.\n Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me\n Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,\n Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,\n And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,\n After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.\n O such themes! Equalities!\n O amazement of things! O divine average!\n O warblings under the sun\u2014ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting!\n O strain, musical, flowing through ages\u2014now reaching hither,\n I take to your reckless and composite chords\u2014I add to them, and cheerfully\n         pass them forward.\n As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on\n her nest in the briars, hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also; I have paused to hear him, near at\n hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully singing.\n And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not\n         there only,\n Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;\n But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,\n A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.\n Democracy!\n Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.\n Ma femme!\n For the brood beyond us and of us,\n For those who belong here, and those to come,\n I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and\n         haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.\n I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way, And your songs, outlawed offenders\u2014for I scan\n you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.\n I  will  make  the  true  poem  of  riches,\u2014 To  earn  for  the  body  and  the  mind  whatever  adheres,  and  goes\n forward, and is not dropped by death.\n I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all\u2014and I will be the bard\n         of personality;\n And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the\n         other;\n And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present\u2014and can be\n         none in the future;\n And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned to\n beautiful results\u2014and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful\n         than death;\n And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are\n         compact,\n And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as\n         profound as any.\n I will not make poems with reference to parts;\n But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with\n         reference to ensemble:\n And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all\n         days;\n And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference\n         to the soul;\n Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no\n         one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul.\n Was  somebody  asking  to  see  the  Soul?  See!  your  own  shape  and  countenance\u2014persons,  substances,\n beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.\n All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:\n How can the real body ever die, and be buried?\n Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,\n Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to\n         fitting spheres,\n Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of\n         death.\n Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning,\n         the main concern,\n Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life,\n         return in the body and the soul,\n Indifferently before death and after death.\n Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern\u2014and includes and is the soul; Whoever\n you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.\n Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.\n Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?\n Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?\n Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,\n Live words\u2014words to the lands.\n O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!\n Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!\n Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and\n         grape!\n Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those\n         sweet-aired interminable plateaus!\n Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!\n Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west\n         Colorado winds!\n Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!\n Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!\n Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and\n         Connecticut!\n Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!\n Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!\n Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!\n The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!\n The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the\n         inexperienced sisters!\n Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the\n         compact!\n The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!\n O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate\n include you all with perfect love!\n I cannot be discharged from you\u2014not from one, any sooner than another!\n O Death! O!\u2014for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with\n         irrepressible love,\n Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,\n Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's\n         sands,\n Crossing the prairies\u2014dwelling again in Chicago\u2014dwelling in every town,\n Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,\n Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls,\n Of and through the States, as during life\u2014each man and woman my\n         neighbour,\n The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,\n The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me\u2014and I yet with any of them;\n Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river\u2014yet in my house of adobie,\n Yet returning eastward\u2014yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,\n Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter\u2014the snow and ice welcome to me,\n         or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;\n Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,or of the\n         Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State; Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same\u2014yet welcoming every new\n         brother;\n Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with\n         the old ones;\n Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal\u2014coming\n         personally to you now;\n Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.\n With me, with firm holding\u2014yet haste, haste on.\n For your life, adhere to me;\n Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;\n I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to\n         you\u2014but what of that?\n Must not Nature be persuaded many times?\n No dainty dolce affettuoso I;\n Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived,\n To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;\n For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.\n On my way a moment I pause;\n Here for you! and here for America!\n Still the Present I raise aloft\u2014still the Future of the States I harbinge,\n         glad and sublime;\n And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.\n The red aborigines! Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the\n woods, syllabled to us for names; Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,\n Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; Leaving such to the States,\n they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.\n O expanding and swift! O henceforth,\n Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;\n A world primal again\u2014vistas of glory, incessant and branching;\n A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests,\n New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.\n These my voice announcing\u2014I will sleep no more, but arise; You oceans that have been calm within me!\n how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.\n See!  steamers  steaming  through  my  poems!  See  in  my  poems  immigrants  continually  coming  and\n landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the\n rude fence, and the backwoods village; See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern\n Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores; See pastures and forests in\n my poems\u2014See animals, wild and tame\u2014See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on\n short  curly  grass;  See,  in  my  poems,  cities,  solid,  vast,  inland,  with  paved  streets,  with  iron  and  stone\n edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered steam printing-press\u2014See the electric\n telegraph,  stretching  across  the  Continent,  from  the  Western  Sea  to  Manhattan;  See,  through  Atlantica's\n depths,  pulses  American,  Europe  reaching\u2014pulses  of  Europe,  duly  returned;  See  the  strong  and  quick\n locomotive,  as  it  departs,  panting,  blowing  the  steam-whistle;  See  ploughmen,  ploughing  farms\u2014See\n miners, digging mines\u2014See the numberless factories; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools\u2014\n See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See,\n lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the\n loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.\n O Camerado close!\n O you and me at last\u2014and us two only.\n O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!\n O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!\n O now I triumph\u2014and you shall also;\n O hand in hand\u2014O wholesome pleasure\u2014O one more desirer and lover!\n O to haste, firm holding\u2014to haste, haste on, with me.\n \n \n \n \n \n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":1,"Keys":"AMERICAN FEUILLAGE.\n","Values":"AMERICA always!\n Always our own feuillage!\n Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana!\n Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!\n Always California's golden hills and hollows\u2014and the silver mountains of\n New Mexico! Always soft-breathed Cuba!\n Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea\u2014inseparable with the\n         slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas!\n The area the eighty-third year of these States\u2014the three and a half\n         millions of square miles;\n The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main\u2014the\n         thirty thousand miles of river navigation,\n The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings\u2014\n Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches;\n Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy!\n Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada,\n         the snows;\n Always these compact lands\u2014lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing\n         the huge oval lakes;\n Always the West, with strong native persons\u2014the increasing density there\u2014\n         the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;\n All sights, South, North, East\u2014all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,\n All characters, movements, growths\u2014a few noticed, myriads unnoticed.\n Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering.\n On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats\n         wooding up:\n Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the\n Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware;\n In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the\n         hills\u2014or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;\n In  a  lonesome  inlet,  a  sheldrake,  lost  from  the  flock,  sitting  on  the  water,  rocking  silently;  In  farmers'\n barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done\u2014they rest standing\u2014they are too tired; Afar on arctic\n ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet\n sailed\u2014the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where\n the ship in the tempest dashes. On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together;\n In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding\u2014the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and\n the  hoarse  bellow  of  the  elk;  In  winter  beneath  the  hard  blue  ice  of  Moosehead  Lake,  in  summer  visible\n through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the\n large  black  buzzard  floating  slowly,  high  beyond  the  tree-tops,  Below,  the  red  cedar,  festooned  with\n tylandria\u2014the  pines  and  cypresses,  growing  out  of  the  white  sand  that  spreads  far  and  flat;  Rude  boats\n descending the big Pedee\u2014climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge\n trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp\n of Georgia waggoners, just after dark\u2014the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,\n Thirty  or  forty  great  waggons\u2014the  mules,  cattle,  horses,  feeding  from  troughs, The  shadows,  gleams,  up\n under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees\u2014the flames\u2014also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling\n and rising; Southern fishermen fishing\u2014the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast\u2014the shad-fishery\n and the herring-fishery\u2014the large sweep- seines\u2014the windlasses on shore worked by horses\u2014the clearing,\n curing, and packing houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in\n the trees\u2014There are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work, in good health\u2014the ground in all\n directions  is  covered  with  pine  straw.  \u2014In  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  slaves  busy  in  the  coalings,  at  the\n forge,  by  the  furnace-blaze,  or  at  the  corn-shucking;  In  Virginia,  the  planter's  son  returning  after  a  long\n absence,  joyfully  welcomed  and  kissed  by  the  aged  mulatto  nurse.  On  rivers,  boatmen  safely  moored  at\n nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the\n banjo or fiddle\u2014others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the\n American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the\n plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. \u2014Northward, young men of Mannahatta\u2014the target\n company  from  an  excursion  returning  home  at  evening\u2014the  musket-muzzles  all  bear  bunches  of  flowers\n presented by women; Children at play\u2014or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move!\n how  he  smiles  in  his  sleep!)  The  scout  riding  on  horseback  over  the  plains  west  of  the  Mississippi\u2014he\n ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around. California life\u2014the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume\n \u2014the  staunch  California  friendship\u2014the  sweet  air\u2014the  graves  one,  in  passing,  meets,  solitary,  just  aside\n the  horse-path;  Down  in  Texas,  the  cotton-field,  the  negro-cabins\u2014drivers  driving  mules  or  oxen  before\n rude  carts\u2014cotton-bales  piled  on  banks  and  wharves.  Encircling  all,  vast-darting,  up  and  wide,  the\n American Soul, with equal hemispheres\u2014one Love, one Dilation or Pride. \u2014In arriere, the peace-talk with\n the Iroquois, the aborigines\u2014the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement, The sachem\n blowing  the  smoke  first  toward  the  sun  and  then  toward  the  earth, The  drama  of  the  scalp-dance  enacted\n with  painted  faces  and  guttural  exclamations,  The  setting-out  of  the  war-party\u2014the  long  and  stealthy\n march,  The  single-file\u2014the  swinging  hatchets\u2014the  surprise  and  slaughter  of  enemies.  \u2014All  the  acts,\n scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States\u2014 reminiscences, all institutions, All these States, compact\n \u2014Every  square  mile  of  these  States,  without  excepting  a  particle\u2014you  also\u2014me  also.  Me  pleased,\n rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow\n butterflies,  shuffling  between  each  other,  ascending  high  in  the  air; The  darting  swallow,  the  destroyer  of\n insects\u2014the  fall-traveller  southward,  but  returning  northward  early  in  the  spring; The  country  boy  at  the\n close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside;\n The city wharf\u2014Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing\n ships,  when  the  sailors  heave  at  the  capstan;  Evening\u2014me  in  my  room\u2014the  setting  sun,  The  setting\n summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the\n centre  of  the  room,  darting  athwart,  up  and  down,  casting  swift  shadows  in  specks  on  the  opposite  wall,\n where the shine is. The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females,\n immigrants,  combinations\u2014the  copiousness\u2014the  individuality  of  the  States,  each  for  itself\u2014the  money-\n makers;  Factories,  machinery,  the  mechanical  forces\u2014the  windlass,  lever,  pulley\u2014  All  certainties,  The\n certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars\u2014on the\n firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear to me\u2014what you are (whatever it is), I become a part\n of that, whatever it is. Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of gulls\n wintering along the coasts of Florida\u2014or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding, Otherways, there, atwixt the\n banks  of  the  Arkansaw,  the  Rio  Grande,  the  Nueces,  the  Brazos,  the  Tombigbee,  the  Red  River,  the\n Saskatchewan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the\n sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms\n and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill,\n for amusement\u2014And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to\n refresh  themselves\u2014the  body  of  the  flock  feed\u2014the  sentinels  outside  move  around  with  erect  heads\n watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels\u2014And I feeding and taking turns with the\n rest; In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet,\n and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives\u2014And I plunging at the hunters, cornered and\n desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in\n the  shops,  And  I  too  of  the  Mannahatta,  singing  thereof\u2014and  no  less  in  myself  than  the  whole  of  the\n Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands\u2014my body no more inevitably united\n part  to  part,  and  made  one  identity,  any  more  than  my  lands  are  inevitably  united,  and  made  ONE\n IDENTITY;  Nativities,  climates,  the  grass  of  the  great  pastoral  plains,  Cities,  labours,  death,  animals,\n products, good and evil\u2014these me,\u2014 These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to\n America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you\n are!  how  can  I  but  offer  you  divine  leaves,  that  you  also  be  eligible  as  I  am?  How  can  I  but,  as  here,\n chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":2,"Keys":"THE PAST-PRESENT.\n","Values":"I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for\n         these chants\u2014and now I have found it.\n It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept\n         nor reject;)\n It is no more in the legends than in all else;\n It is in the present\u2014it is this earth to-day;\n It is in Democracy\u2014in this America\u2014the Old World also;\n It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day;\n It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;\n It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics,\n         creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,\n All for the average man of to-day.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":3,"Keys":"YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED.\n","Values":"Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises\u2014I see it part away for more\n         august dramas;\n I see not America only\u2014I see not only Liberty's nation but other nations\n         embattling;\n I see tremendous entrances and exits\u2014I see new combinations\u2014I see the\n         solidarity of races;\n I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;\n Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to them\n         closed?\n I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law\n         by her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste;\n \u2014What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?\n I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions!\n I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;\n I see the landmarks of European kings removed;\n I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way;\n Never were such sharp questions asked as this day;\n Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God.\n Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;\n His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere\u2014he colonises the Pacific,\n         the archipelagoes;\n With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale\n         engines of war,\n With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,\n         all lands;\n \u2014What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the\n seas?\n Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?\n Is humanity forming en masse?\u2014for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;\n The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;\n No one knows what will happen next\u2014such portents fill the days and nights.\n Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it,\n         is full of phantoms;\n Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;\n This incredible rush and heat\u2014this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, O\n         years!\n Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I\n         sleep or wake!)\n The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,\n The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":4,"Keys":"FLUX.\n","Values":"Of  these  years  I  sing,  How  they  pass  through  convulsed  pains,  as  through  parturitions;  How  America\n illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people\u2014Illustrates evil as well\n as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and\n to infidelity; How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States\u2014or see freedom or spirituality\u2014or\n hold  any  faith  in  results.  But  I  see  the  athletes\u2014and  I  see  the  results  glorious  and  inevitable\u2014and  they\n again leading to other results; How the great cities appear\u2014How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful,\n as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep\n on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is\n the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society,\n and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves\u2014And how all triumphs and glories\n are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be\n convulsed,  and  serve  other  parturitions  and  transitions.  And  how  all  people,  sights,  combinations,  the\n Democratic masses, too, serve\u2014and how every fact serves, And how now, or at any time, each serves the\n exquisite transition of Death.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":5,"Keys":"TO WORKING MEN.\n","Values":" Come closer to me;\n Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;\n Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.\n This is unfinished business with me\u2014How is it with you?\n (I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)\n Male and Female! I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.\n American masses! I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me\u2014I know that it is\n good for you to do so.\n This is the poem of occupations;\n In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the\n         developments,\n And find the eternal meanings.\n Workmen and Workwomen!\n Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me,\n         what would it amount to?\n Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what\n         would it amount to?\n Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?\n The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms;\n A man like me, and never the usual terms.\n Neither a servant nor a master am I;\n I take no sooner a large price than a small price\u2014I will have my own,\n         whoever enjoys me;\n I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.\n If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your\n brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is\n welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I\n become  so  for  your  sake;  If  you  remember  your  foolish  and  outlawed  deeds,  do  you  think  I  cannot\n remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of\n the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her\u2014why I often meet strangers in the\n street, and love them.\n Why, what have you thought of yourself?\n Is it you then that thought yourself less?\n Is it you that thought the President greater than you?\n Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?\n Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief,\n Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;\n Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw\n         your name in print,\n Do you give in that you are any less immortal?\n Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable\n         and untouching;\n It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are\n         alive or no;\n I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.\n Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much\n as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them.\n The wife\u2014and she is not one jot less than the husband;\n The daughter\u2014and she is just as good as the son;\n The mother\u2014and she is every bit as much as the father.\n Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,\n Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,\n Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,\n All these I see\u2014but nigher and farther the same I see;\n None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.\n I bring what you much need, yet always have,\n Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;\n I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the\n         value itself.\n There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;\n It is not what is printed, preached, discussed\u2014it eludes discussion and\n         print;\n It is not to be put in a book\u2014it is not in this book;\n It is for you, whoever you are\u2014it is no farther from you than your hearing\n         and sight are from you;\n It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest\u2014it is ever provoked by them.\n You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it; You may read the President's Message, and\n read nothing about it there; Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in\n the daily papers or the weekly papers, Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of\n stock.\n The sun and stars that float in the open air;\n The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it\u2014surely the drift of them is\n         something grand!\n I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is\n         happiness,\n And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,\n         or reconnoissance,\n And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and\n         without luck must be a failure for us,\n And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.\n The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that\n         with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and\n         outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,\n The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that\n         fill each minute of time for ever,\n What have you reckoned them for, camerado?\n Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a\n         store?\n Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a\n         lady's leisure?\n Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? Or men\n and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws\n and harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans? Or the brown land and\n the blue sea for maps and charts? Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names? Or that\n the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture itself?\n Old institutions\u2014these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures\n \u2014will we rate them so high? Will we rate our cash and business high?\u2014I have no objection; I rate them as\n high as the highest\u2014then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.\n We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand;\n I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are;\n I am this day just as much in love with them as you;\n Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth.\n We consider Bibles and religions divine\u2014I do not say they are not divine;\n I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;\n It is not they who give the life\u2014it is you who give the life;\n Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they\n         are shed out of you.\n When the psalm sings, instead of the singer;\n When the script preaches, instead of the preacher;\n When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the\n         supporting desk;\n When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch\n         my body back again;\n When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and child\n         convince;\n When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's\n         daughter;\n When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly\n         companions;\n I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and\n         women like you.\n The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;\n The President is there in the White House for you\u2014it is not you who are\n         here for him;\n The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you\u2014not you here for them;\n The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;\n Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and\n         coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.\n List close, my scholars dear!\n All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you;\n All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied\n         in you;\n The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is\n         in you this hour, and myths and tales the same;\n If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?\n The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be\n         vacuums.\n All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; Did you think it was in the white or grey\n stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?\n All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the\n         instruments;\n It is not the violins and the cornets\u2014it is not the oboe nor the beating\n         drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet\n         romanza\u2014nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's\n         chorus,\n It is nearer and farther than they.\n Will the whole come back then?\n Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there\n         nothing greater or more?\n Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul?\n Strange and hard that paradox true I give;\n Objects gross and the unseen Soul are one.\n House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;\n Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-\n         dressing,\n Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks\n         by flaggers,\n The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,\n Coal-mines, and all that is down there,\u2014the lamps in the darkness, echoes,\n         songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through\n         smutched faces,\n Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks\u2014men around\n         feeling the melt with huge crowbars\u2014lumps of ore, the due\n         combining of ore, limestone, coal\u2014the blast-furnace and the\n         puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last\u2014\n         the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean\n         shaped T-rail for railroads;\n Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the\n         great mills and factories;\n Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for fa\u00e7ades, or window or door lintels\u2014\n         the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum,\n         the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron\u2014the kettle of boiling vault-\n         cement, and the fire under the kettle,\n The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the\n         mould of the moulder, the working knife of the butcher, the ice-\n         saw, and all the work with ice,\n The implements for daguerreotyping\u2014the tools of the rigger, grappler,\n         sail-maker, block-maker,\n Goods of gutta-percha, papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9, colours, brushes, brush-making,\n         glaziers' implements,\n The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter and\n         glasses, the shears and flat-iron,\n The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and\n         stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal\u2014the making of all sorts\n         of edged tools,\n The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done by\n         brewers, also by wine-makers, also vinegar-makers,\n Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling,\n         sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking\u2014electro-plating,\n         electrotyping, stereotyping,\n Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,\n         ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam waggons,\n The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray;\n Pyrotechny, letting off coloured fireworks at night, fancy figures and\n         jets,\n Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the\n         butcher in his killing-clothes,\n The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub,\n         gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous\n         winter-work of pork-packing,\n Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice\u2014the barrels and the half\n         and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves\n         and levees,\n The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats,\n         canals;\n The daily routine of your own or any man's life\u2014the shop, yard, store, or\n         factory;\n These shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, your\n         daily life!\n In that and them the heft of the heaviest\u2014in them far more than you\n         estimated, and far less also;\n In them realities for you and me\u2014in them poems for you and me;\n In them, not yourself\u2014you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of\n         estimation;\n In them the development good\u2014in them, all themes and hints.\n I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile\u2014I do not advise you to stop;\n I do not say leadings you thought great are not great;\n But I say that none lead to greater than those lead to.\n Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,\n In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,\n In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;\n Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place\u2014not for another\n         hour, but this hour;\n Man in the first you see or touch\u2014always in friend, brother, nighest\n         neighbour\u2014Woman in mother, sister, wife;\n The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,\n You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong\n         life,\n And all else giving place to men and women like you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":6,"Keys":"SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE.\n","Values":" Weapon, shapely, naked, wan;\n Head from the mother's bowels drawn!\n Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!\n Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!\n Resting the grass amid and upon,\n To be leaned, and to lean on.\n Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes\u2014masculine trades, sights\n         and sounds;\n Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music;\n Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.\n Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind;\n Welcome are lands of pine and oak;\n Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig;\n Welcome are lands of gold;\n Welcome are lands of wheat and maize\u2014welcome those of the grape;\n Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;\n Welcome are cotton-lands\u2014welcome those of the white potato and sweet\n         potato;\n Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies;\n Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,\n Welcome the measureless grazing-lands\u2014welcome the teeming soil of\n         orchards, flax, honey, hemp;\n Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands;\n Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands;\n Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores;\n Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc;\n LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!\n The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;\n The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space cleared for a garden,\n The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is\n         lulled,\n The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,\n The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam-ends, and\n         the cutting away of masts;\n The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses and barns;\n The remembered print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,\n         families, goods,\n The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,\n The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it\u2014the outset\n         anywhere,\n The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,\n The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;\n The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,\n The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces,\n The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,\n The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience\n         of restraint,\n The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the\n         solidification;\n The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops,\n         the raftsman, the pioneer,\n Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on\n         the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,\n The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life\n         of the woods, the strong day's work,\n The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of\n         hemlock boughs, and the bearskin;\n \u2014The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,\n The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,\n The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them\n         regular, Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises,\n         according as they were prepared,\n The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curved\n         limbs,\n Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts\n         and braces,\n The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,\n The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed,\n Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,\n The echoes resounding through the vacant building;\n The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way,\n The six framing men, two in the middle, and two at each end, carefully\n         bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,\n The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly\n         laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,\n The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels\n         striking the bricks,\n The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and\n         set with a knock of the trowel-handle,\n The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady\n         replenishing by the hod-men;\n \u2014Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,\n The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the\n         shape of a mast,\n The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,\n The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,\n The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;\n The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays\n         against the sea;\n \u2014The city fireman\u2014the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-packed\n         square,\n The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,\n The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise\n         and fall of the arms forcing the water,\n The slender, spasmic blue-white jets\u2014the bringing to bear of the hooks and\n         ladders, and their execution,\n The crash and cut-away of connecting woodwork, or through floors, if the\n         fire smoulders under them,\n The crowd with their lit faces, watching\u2014the glare and dense shadows;\n \u2014The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him,\n The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,\n The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge\n         with his thumb,\n The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;\n The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,\n The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,\n The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,\n The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,\n The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,\n The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,\n The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe\n         thither,\n The siege of revolted lieges determined for liberty,\n The summons to surrender, the battering at castle-gates, the truce and\n         parley;\n The sack of an old city in its time,\n The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,\n Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,\n Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe\n         of brigands,\n Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,\n The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,\n The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust,\n The power of personality, just or unjust.\n Muscle and pluck for ever!\n What invigorates life invigorates death,\n And the dead advance as much as the living advance,\n And the future is no more uncertain than the present,\n And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as\n         much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,\n And nothing endures but personal qualities.\n What do you think endures? Do you think the great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a\n prepared constitution? or the best- built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chefs-d'oeuvre of\n engineering, forts, armaments?\n Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves;\n They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play\n         for them;\n The show passes, all does well enough of course,\n All does very well till one flash of defiance.\n The  great  city  is  that  which  has  the  greatest  man  or  woman;  If  it  be  a  few  ragged  huts,  it  is  still  the\n greatest city in the whole world.\n The place where the great city stands is not the place of stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits\n of produce, Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing, Nor the\n place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, Nor the place of\n the best libraries and schools\u2014nor the place where money is plentiest, Nor the place of the most numerous\n population.\n Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards;\n Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return,\n         and understands them;\n Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds;\n Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place;\n Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;\n Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;\n Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of\n         elected persons;\n Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death\n         pours its sweeping and unripped waves;\n Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside\n         authority;\n Where the citizen is always the head and ideal\u2014and President, Mayor,\n         Governor, and what not, are agents for pay;\n Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on\n         themselves;\n Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs;\n Where speculations on the Soul are encouraged;\n Where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men;\n Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;\n Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands;\n Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands;\n Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands;\n Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,\u2014\n There the great city stands.\n How  beggarly  appear  arguments  before  a  defiant  deed!  How  the  floridness  of  the  materials  of  cities\n shrivels before a man's or woman's look!\n All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears;\n A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the\n         universe;\n When he or she appears, materials are overawed,\n The dispute on the Soul stops,\n The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid away.\n What is your money-making now? What can it do now?\n What is your respectability now?\n What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?\n Where are your jibes of being now?\n Where are your cavils about the Soul now?\n Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?\n Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obediently from the path\n         of one man or woman!\n The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the foot-soles of one\n         man or woman!\n A sterile landscape covers the ore\u2014there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There\n is the mine, there are the miners; The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are\n at hand with their tongs and hammers; What always served and always serves is at hand.\n Than this nothing has better served\u2014it has served all:\n Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek;\n Served in building the buildings that last longer than any;\n Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;\n Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi\u2014served those whose relics\n         remain in Central America;\n Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the\n         druids;\n Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills\n         of Scandinavia;\n Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough\n         sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves;\n Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths\u2014served the pastoral tribes\n         and nomads;\n Served the long long distant Kelt\u2014served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;\n Served, before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia;\n Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of\n         those for war;\n Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea;\n For the mediaeval ages, and before the mediaeval ages;\n Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.\n I see the European headsman;\n He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,\n And leans on a ponderous axe.\n Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?\n Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?\n I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;\n I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,\n Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected\n         kings,\n Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.\n I see those who in any land have died for the good cause;\n The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out;\n (Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)\n I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe;\n Both blade and helve are clean;\n They spirt no more the blood of European nobles\u2014they clasp no more the\n         necks of queens.\n I see the headsman withdraw and become useless;\n I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy\u2014I see no longer any axe upon it;\n I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race\u2014the\n         newest, largest race.\n America! I do not vaunt my love for you;\n I have what I have.\n The axe leaps!\n The solid forest gives fluid utterances;\n They tumble forth, they rise and form,\n Hut, tent, landing, survey,\n Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,\n Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,\n Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library,\n Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch,\n Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,\n         wedge, rounce,\n Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,\n Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not,\n Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,\n Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or\n         sick,\n Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.\n The  shapes  arise!  Shapes  of  the  using  of  axes  anyhow,  and  the  users,  and  all  that  neighbours  them,\n Cutters-down  of  wood,  and  haulers  of  it  to  the  Penobscot  or  Kennebec,  Dwellers  in  cabins  among  the\n Californian mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia, Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or\n Rio  Grande\u2014friendly  gatherings,  the  characters  and  fun,  Dwellers  up  north  in  Minnesota  and  by  the\n Yellowstone  river\u2014dwellers  on  coasts  and  off  coasts,  Seal-fishers,  whalers,  arctic  seamen  breaking\n passages through the ice.\n The shapes arise!\n Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets;\n Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;\n Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;\n Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake craft, river craft.\n The shapes arise! Shipyards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and\n by-place,  The  live-oak  kelsons,  the  pine-planks,  the  spars,  the  hackmatack-roots  for  knees,  The  ships\n themselves  on  their  ways,  the  tiers  of  scaffolds,  the  workmen  busy  outside  and  inside,  The  tools  lying\n around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.\n The shapes arise! The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained, The coffin-shape for the dead to lie\n within in his shroud; The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride's bed; The\n shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle; The shape of the\n floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet; The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the\n friendly parents and children, The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the\n roof over the well-married young man and woman, The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste\n wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work.\n The shapes arise!\n The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him or her\n         seated in the place;\n The shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young rum-drinker and the\n         old rum-drinker;\n The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod, by sneaking footsteps;\n The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple;\n The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings;\n The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the\n         murderer with haggard face and pinioned arms,\n The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipped crowd,\n         the sickening dangling of the rope.\n The shapes arise!\n Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances;\n The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed and in haste;\n The door that admits good news and bad news;\n The door whence the son left home, confident and puffed up;\n The door he entered again from a long and scandalous absence, diseased,\n         broken down, without innocence, without means.\n Her shape arises,\n She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;\n The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled;\n She knows the thoughts as she passes\u2014nothing is concealed from her;\n She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;\n She is the best beloved\u2014it is without exception\u2014she has no reason to\n         fear, and she does not fear;\n Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as\n         she passes;\n She is silent\u2014she is possessed of herself\u2014they do not offend her;\n She receives them as the laws of nature receive them\u2014she is strong,\n She too is a law of nature\u2014there is no law stronger than she is.\n The main shapes arise!\n Shapes of Democracy, total result of centuries;\n Shapes, ever projecting other shapes;\n Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another hundred;\n Shapes of turbulent manly cities;\n Shapes of the women fit for these States,\n Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,\n Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole earth.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":7,"Keys":"ANTECEDENTS.\n","Values":" With antecedents;\n With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages:\n With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am;\n With Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome;\n With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;\n With antique maritime ventures,\u2014with laws, artisanship, wars, and\n         journeys;\n With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;\n With the sale of slaves\u2014with enthusiasts\u2014with the troubadour, the\n         crusader, and the monk;\n With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent;\n With the fading kingdoms and kings over there;\n With the fading religions and priests;\n With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present\n         shores;\n With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years;\n You and Me arrived\u2014America arrived, and making this year;\n This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.\n O but it is not the years\u2014it is I\u2014it is You;\n We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents;\n We are the skald, the oracle, the monk, and the knight\u2014we easily include\n         them, and more;\n We stand amid time, beginningless and endless\u2014we stand amid evil and good;\n All swings around us\u2014there is as much darkness as light;\n The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us:\n Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.\n As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement days;)\n I have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all;\n I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true\u2014I reject no part.\n Have I forgotten any part?\n Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.\n I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;\n I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god;\n I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without\n         exception;\n I assert that all past days were what they should have been;\n And that they could nohow have been better than they were,\n And that to-day is what it should be\u2014and that America is,\n And that to-day and America could nohow be better than they are.\n In the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Past,\n And in the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Present time.\n I know that the past was great, and the future will be great,\n And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,\n For the sake of him I typify\u2014for the common average man's sake\u2014your sake,\n         if you are he;\n And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the centre of\n         all days, all races,\n And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come of races and\n         days, or ever will come.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":8,"Keys":"SALUT AU MONDE!\n","Values":" O take my hand, Walt Whitman!\n Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!\n Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next!\n Each answering all\u2014each sharing the earth with all.\n What widens within you, Walt Whitman?\n What waves and soils exuding?\n What climes? what persons and lands are here?\n Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering?\n Who are the girls? who are the married women?\n Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about each others'\n         necks?\n What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?\n What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists?\n What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers?\n Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;\n Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east\u2014America is provided for in the west;\n Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,\n Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;\n Within me is the longest day\u2014the sun wheels in slanting rings\u2014it does not\n         set for months.\n Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the\n         horizon, and sinks again;\n Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups,\n Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.\n What do you hear, Walt Whitman?\n I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing;\n I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the\n         day;\n I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky,\n         hunting on hills;\n I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse;\n I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the\n         rebeck and guitar;\n I hear continual echoes from the Thames;\n I hear fierce French liberty songs;\n I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems;\n I hear the Virginian plantation chorus of negroes, of a harvest night, in\n         the glare of pine-knots;\n I hear the strong barytone of the 'long-shore-men of Mannahatta;\n I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing;\n I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes;\n I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and\n         grass with the showers of their terrible clouds;\n I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast\n         of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile;\n I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada;\n I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule;\n I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque;\n I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches\u2014I hear the\n         responsive bass and soprano;\n I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired Irish grandparents,\n         when they learn the death of their grandson;\n I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at\n         Okotsk;\n I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on\u2014as the husky\n         gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-\n         chains and ankle-chains;\n I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment\u2014I hear the sibilant\n         whisk of thongs through the air;\n I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;\n I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the\n         Romans;\n I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God,\n         the Christ;\n I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars, adages,\n         transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand\n         years ago.\n What do you see, Walt Whitman?\n Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?\n I see a great round wonder rolling through the air: I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails,\n factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface; I see the shaded part on one\n side, where the sleepers are sleeping\u2014and the sun-lit part on the other side; I see the curious silent change\n of the light and shade; I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me.\n I see plenteous waters;\n I see mountain-peaks\u2014I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, where\n         they range;\n I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;\n I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds;\n I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps;\n I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians\u2014and to the north the Dofrafields,\n         and off at sea Mount Hecla;\n I see Vesuvius and Etna\u2014I see the Anahuacs;\n I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red\n         Mountains of Madagascar;\n I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;\n I see the vast deserts of Western America;\n I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;\n I see huge dreadful Arctic and Anarctic icebergs;\n I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones\u2014the Atlantic and Pacific,\n         the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,\n The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of\n         Guinea,\n The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay\n         of Biscay,\n The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,\n The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,\n The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.\n I behold the mariners of the world;\n Some are in storms\u2014some in the night, with the watch on the look-out;\n Some drifting helplessly\u2014some with contagious diseases.\n I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in clusters in port,\n         some on their voyages;\n Some double the Cape of Storms\u2014some Cape Verde,\u2014others Cape Guardafui,\n         Bon, or Bajadore;\n Others Dondra Head\u2014others pass the Straits of Sunda\u2014others Cape Lopatka\u2014\n         others Behring's Straits;\n Others Cape Horn\u2014others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti\u2014others\n         Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay;\n Others pass the Straits of Dover\u2014others enter the Wash\u2014others the Firth\n         of Solway\u2014others round Cape Clear\u2014others the Land's End;\n Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld;\n Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook;\n Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the Dardanelles;\n Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs;\n Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena:\n Others the Niger or the Congo\u2014others the Indus, the Burampooter and\n         Cambodia;\n Others wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steamed up, ready to start;\n Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia;\n Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg,\n         Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen;\n Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama;\n Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New\n         Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco.\n I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth;\n I see them welding State to State, city to city, through North America;\n I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe;\n I see them in Asia and in Africa.\n I see the electric telegraphs of the earth; I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,\n passions, of my race.\n I see the long river-stripes of the earth;\n I see where the Mississippi flows\u2014I see where the Columbia flows;\n I see the Great River, and the Falls of Niagara;\n I see the Amazon and the Paraguay;\n I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River, the\n         Yiang-tse, and the Pearl;\n I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the\n         Guadalquivir flow;\n I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder;\n I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po;\n I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.\n I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that\n         of India;\n I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.\n I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human\n         forms;\n I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth\u2014oracles,\n         sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters;\n I see where druids walked the groves of Mona\u2014I see the mistletoe and\n         vervain;\n I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods\u2014I see the old\n         signifiers.\n I see Christ once more eating the bread of His last supper, in the midst of youths and old persons: I see\n where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toiled faithfully and long, and then died; I see the place of\n the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus; I see Kneph,\n blooming,  drest  in  blue,  with  the  crown  of  feathers  on  his  head;  I  see  Hermes,  unsuspected,  dying,  well-\n beloved, saying to the people, Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from\n my true country\u2014I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn.\n I see the battlefields of the earth\u2014grass grows upon them, and blossoms\n         and corn;\n I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.\n I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth; I\n see the places of the sagas; I see pine-trees and fir-frees torn by northern blasts; I see granite boulders and\n cliffs\u2014I see green meadows and lakes; I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors; I see them raised\n high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits, when they wearied of their\n quiet  graves,  might  rise  up  through  the  mounds,  and  gaze  on  the  tossing  billows,  and  be  refreshed  by\n storms, immensity, liberty, action.\n I see the steppes of Asia;\n I see the tumuli of Mongolia\u2014I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs;\n I see the nomadic tribes, with herds of oxen and cows;\n I see the table-lands notched with ravines\u2014I see the jungles and deserts;\n I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the\n         antelope, and the burrowing-wolf.\n I see the highlands of Abyssinia;\n I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,\n And see fields of teff-wheat, and see the places of verdure and gold.\n I see the Brazilian vaquero;\n I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata;\n I see the Wacho crossing the plains\u2014I see the incomparable rider of horses\n with his lasso on his arm;\n I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.\n I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited; I see two boats with nets, lying off the\n shore  of  Paumanok,  quite  still;  I  see  ten  fishermen  waiting\u2014they  discover  now  a  thick  school  of\n mossbonkers\u2014they drop the joined sein-ends in the water, The boats separate\u2014they diverge and row off,\n each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers; The net is drawn in by a windlass by\n those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats\u2014others stand negligently ankle-deep in\n the water, poised on strong legs; The boats are partly drawn up\u2014the water slaps against them; On the sand,\n in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green- backed spotted mossbonkers.\n I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of\n         Moingo, and about Lake Pepin;\n He has heard the quail and beheld the honey-bee, and sadly prepared to\n         depart.\n I see the regions of snow and ice;\n I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn;\n I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance;\n I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs;\n I see the porpess-hunters\u2014I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and\n         the North Atlantic;\n I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland\u2014I mark the\n         long winters, and the isolation.\n I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them;\n I am a real Parisian;\n I am a habitant of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople;\n I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne;\n I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,\n I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne,\n         Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence;\n I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw\u2014or northward in Christiania or\n         Stockholm\u2014or in Siberian Irkutsk\u2014or in some street in Iceland;\n I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.\n I  see  vapours  exhaling  from  unexplored  countries;  I  see  the  savage  types,  the  bow  and  arrow,  the\n poisoned splint, the fetish, and the obi.\n I see African and Asiatic towns;\n I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia;\n I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;\n I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their\n         huts;\n I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo;\n I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat;\n I see Teheran\u2014I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands\u2014I see\n         the caravans toiling onward;\n I see Egypt and the Egyptians\u2014I see the pyramids and obelisks;\n I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of\n         sandstone or on granite blocks;\n I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen\n         cloth, lying there many centuries;\n I look on the fallen Theban, the large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck,\n         the hands folded across the breast.\n I see the menials of the earth, labouring;\n I see the prisoners in the prisons;\n I see the defective human bodies of the earth;\n I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;\n I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the\n         earth;\n I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.\n I see male and female everywhere;\n I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs;\n I see the constructiveness of my race;\n I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race;\n I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations\u2014I go among them\u2014I mix\n         indiscriminately,\n And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.\n You, where you are!\n You daughter or son of England!\n You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!\n You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed,\n         nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!\n You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!\n You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!\n You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!\n You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!\n You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!\n You neighbour of the Danube!\n You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman\n         too!\n You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!\n You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek!\n You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!\n You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!\n You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding!\n You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle shooting arrows\n         to the mark!\n You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!\n You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!\n You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on\n         Syrian ground!\n You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!\n You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you\n         peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!\n You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of\n         Mecca!\n You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandeb, ruling your families\n         and tribes!\n You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or\n         Lake Tiberias!\n You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!\n You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,\n         Borneo!\n All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of\n         place!\n All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!\n And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!\n And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the\n         same!\n Health to you! Goodwill to you all\u2014from me and America sent.\n Each of us inevitable;\n Each of us limitless\u2014each of us with his or her right upon the earth;\n Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth:\n Each of us here as divinely as any is here.\n You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes!\n You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!\n You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!\n I dare not refuse you\u2014the scope of the world, and of time and space, are\n         upon me.\n You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your\n         glimmering language and spirituality!\n You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California!\n You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lap!\n You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling,\n         seeking your food!\n You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!\n You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!\n You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!\n You bather bathing in the Ganges!\n You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Fejee-man!\n You peon of Mexico! you slave of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee!\n I do not prefer others so very much before you either;\n I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;\n You will come forward in due time to my side.\n My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole\n         earth;\n I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all\n         lands;\n I think some divine rapport has equalised me with them.\n O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant\n         continents, and fallen down there, for reasons;\n I think I have blown with you, O winds;\n O waters, I have fingered every shore with you.\n I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through; I have taken my stand on the\n bases of peninsulas, and on the highest embedded rocks, to cry thence.\n Salut au Monde!\n What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities\n         myself;\n All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself.\n Toward all\n I raise high the perpendicular hand\u2014I make the signal,\n To remain after me in sight for ever,\n For all the haunts and homes of men.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":9,"Keys":"A BROADWAY PAGEANT.\n","Values":"(RECEPTION OF THE JAPANESE EMBASSY, JUNE 16, 1860.)\n Over sea, hither from Niphon,\n Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheeked princes,\n First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,\n Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed,\n         impassive,\n This day they ride through Manhattan.\n Libertad!\n I do not know whether others behold what I behold,\n In the procession, along with the Princes of Asia, the errand-bearers,\n Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching;\n But I will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad.\n When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements;\n When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love;\n When the round-mouthed guns, out of the smoke and smell I love, spit their\n         salutes;\n When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me\u2014when heaven-clouds\n         canopy my city with a delicate thin haze;\n When, gorgeous, the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves,\n         thicken with colours;\n When every ship, richly dressed, carries her flag at the peak;\n When pennants trail, and street-festoons hang from the windows;\n When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers\u2014\n when the mass is densest;\n When the fa\u00e7ades of the houses are alive with people\u2014when eyes gaze,\n         riveted, tens of thousands at a time;\n When the guests from the islands advance\u2014when the pageant moves forward,\n         visible;\n When the summons is made\u2014when the answer, that waited thousands of years,\n         answers;\n I too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd,\n         and gaze with them.\n Superb-faced Manhattan!\n Comrade Americanos!\u2014to us, then, at last, the Orient comes.\n To us, my city,\n Where our tall-topped marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides\u2014to\n         walk in the space between,\n To-day our Antipodes comes.\n The Originatress comes,\n The land of Paradise\u2014land of the Caucasus\u2014the nest of birth,\n The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,\n Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,\n Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,\n With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,\n The race of Brahma comes!\n See, my cantabile! these, and more, are flashing to us from the procession;\n As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.\n Not the errand-bearing princes, nor the tanned Japanee only;\n Lithe and silent, the Hindoo appears\u2014the whole Asiatic continent itself\n         appears\u2014the Past, the dead,\n The murky night-morning of wonder and fable, inscrutable,\n The enveloped mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,\n The North\u2014the sweltering South\u2014Assyria\u2014the Hebrews\u2014the Ancient of\n         ancients,\n Vast desolated cities\u2014the gliding Present\u2014all of these, and more, are in\n         the pageant-procession.\n Geography, the world, is in it;\n The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond;\n The coast you henceforth are facing\u2014you Libertad! from your Western golden\n         shores;\n The countries there, with their populations\u2014the millions en masse, are\n         curiously here;\n The swarming market-places\u2014the temples, with idols ranged along the sides,\n         or at the end\u2014bronze, brahmin, and lama;\n The mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman;\n The singing-girl and the dancing-girl\u2014the ecstatic person\u2014the divine\n         Buddha;\n The secluded Emperors\u2014Confucius himself\u2014the great poets and heroes\u2014the\n         warriors, the castes, all,\n Trooping up, crowding from all directions\u2014from the Altay mountains,\n From Thibet\u2014from the four winding and far-flowing rivers\n         of China,\n From the Southern peninsulas, and the demi-continental islands\u2014from\n         Malaysia;\n These, and whatever belongs to them, palpable, show forth to me, and are\n         seized by me,\n And I am seized by them, and friendlily held by them,\n Till, as here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.\n For I too, raising my voice, join the ranks of this pageant;\n I am the chanter\u2014I chant aloud over the pageant;\n I chant the world on my Western Sea;\n I chant, copious, the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky;\n I chant the new empire, grander than any before\u2014As in a vision it comes to\n         me;\n I chant America, the Mistress\u2014I chant a greater supremacy;\n I chant, projected, a thousand blooming cities yet, in time, on those\n         groups of sea-islands;\n I chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes;\n I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind;\n I chant commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work\u2014races\n         reborn, refreshed;\n Lives, works, resumed\u2014The object I know not\u2014but the old, the Asiatic,\n         resumed, as it must be,\n Commencing from this day, surrounded by the world.\n And you, Libertad of the world!\n You shall sit in the middle, well-poised, thousands of years;\n As to-day, from one side, the Princes of Asia come to you;\n As to-morrow, from the other side, the Queen of England sends her eldest\n         son to you.\n The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,\n The ring is circled, the journey is done;\n The box-lid is but perceptibly opened\u2014nevertheless the perfume pours\n         copiously out of the whole box.\n Young Libertad!\n With the venerable Asia, the all-mother,\n Be considerate with her, now and ever, hot Libertad\u2014for you are all;\n Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother, now sending messages over the\n         archipelagoes to you:\n Bend your proud neck for once, young Libertad.\n Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping?\n Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?\n Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for\n         you, for reasons?\n They are justified\u2014they are accomplished\u2014they shall now be turned the\n         other way also, to travel toward you thence;\n They shall now also march obediently eastward, for your sake, Libertad.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":10,"Keys":"OLD IRELAND.\n","Values":" Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,\n Crouching over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother,\n Once a queen\u2014now lean and tattered, seated on the ground,\n Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round her shoulders;\n At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,\n Long silent\u2014she too long silent\u2014mourning her shrouded hope and heir;\n Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.\n Yet a word, ancient mother;\n You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between\n         your knees;\n O you need not sit there, veiled in your old white hair, so dishevelled;\n For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;\n It was an illusion\u2014the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;\n The Lord is not dead\u2014he is risen again, young and strong, in another\n         country;\n Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave,\n What you wept for was translated, passed from the grave,\n The winds favoured, and the sea sailed it,\n And now, with rosy and new blood,\n Moves to-day in a new country.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":11,"Keys":"BOSTON TOWN.\n","Values":" To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;\n Here's a good place at the corner\u2014I must stand and see the show.\n Clear the way there, Jonathan!\n Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!\n Way for the Federal foot and dragoons\u2014and the apparitions copiously\n         tumbling.\n I love to look on the stars and stripes\u2014I hope the fifes will play \"Yankee\n         Doodle,\"\n How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!\n Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.\n A fog follows\u2014antiques of the same come limping,\n Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.\n Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!\n The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!\n Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!\n Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!\n Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!\n What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare\n         gums?\n Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for\n         firelocks, and level them?\n If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's\n         marshal;\n If you groan such groans, you might baulk the government cannon.\n For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white\n         hair be;\n Here gape your great grandsons\u2014their wives gaze at them from the windows,\n See how well-dressed\u2014see how orderly they conduct themselves.\n Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?\n Is this hour with the living too dead for you?\n Retreat then! Pell-mell!\n To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers!\n I do not think you belong here, anyhow.\n But there is one thing that belongs here\u2014shall I tell you what it is,\n         gentlemen of Boston?\n I will whisper it to the Mayor\u2014He shall send a committee to England;\n They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal\n         vault\u2014haste!\n Dig out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes, box\n         up his bones for a journey;\n Find a swift Yankee clipper\u2014here is freight for you, black-bellied\n         clipper,\n Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston\n         bay.\n Now call for the President's marshal again, bring out the government\n         cannon,\n Fetch home the roarers from Congress,\u2014make another procession, guard it\n         with foot and dragoons.\n This centre-piece for them!\n Look, all orderly citizens! Look from the windows, women!\n The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue those that will not\n         stay;\n Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.\n You have got your revenge, old bluster! The crown is come to its own, and\n         more than its own.\n Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan\u2014you are a made man from this\n         day;\n You are mighty 'cute\u2014and here is one of your bargains.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":12,"Keys":"FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES.[1]\n","Values":" A great year and place; A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer\n than any yet.\n I  walked  the  shores  of  my  Eastern  Sea,  Heard  over  the  waves  the  little  voice,  Saw  the  divine  infant,\n where  she  woke,  mournfully  wailing,  amid  the  roar  of  cannon,  curses,  shouts,  crash  of  falling  buildings;\n Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running\u2014nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor\n those borne away in the tumbrils; Was not so desperate at the battues of death\u2014was not so shocked at the\n repeated fusillades of the guns.\n Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?\n Could I wish humanity different?\n Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?\n Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?\n O Liberty! O mate for me!\n Here too the blaze, the bullet, and the axe, in reserve to fetch them out\n         in case of need,\n Here too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed;\n Here too could rise at last, murdering and ecstatic;\n Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.\n Hence I sign this salute over the sea,\n And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,\n But remember the little voice that I heard wailing\u2014and wait with perfect\n         trust, no matter how long;\n And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed cause, as for\n         all lands,\n And I send these words to Paris with my love,\n And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,\n For I guess there is latent music yet in France\u2014floods of it.\n O I hear already the bustle of instruments\u2014they will soon be drowning all\n         that would interrupt them;\n O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,\n It reaches hither\u2014it swells me to joyful madness,\n I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,\n I will yet sing a song for you, ma femme!\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":13,"Keys":"EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES.\n","Values":null},{"Unnamed: 0":14,"Keys":"[1]\n","Values":" Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,\n Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself,\n Its feet upon the ashes and the rags\u2014its hands tight to the throats of\n         kings.\n O hope and faith!\n O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!\n O many a sickened heart!\n Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.\n And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!\n Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,\n For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity\n         the poor man's wages,\n For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the\n         breaking,\n Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the\n         heads of the nobles fall;\n The People scorned the ferocity of kings.\n But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened\n         rulers come back;\n Each comes in state with his train\u2014hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,\n Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.\n Yet behind all, lowering, stealing\u2014lo, a Shape,\n Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, in scarlet\n         folds,\n Whose face and eyes none may see:\n Out of its robes only this\u2014the red robes, lifted by the arm\u2014\n One finger crooked, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake\n         appears.\n Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves\u2014bloody corpses of young men;\n The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying,\n         the creatures of power laugh aloud,\n And all these things bear fruits\u2014and they are good.\n Those corpses of young men,\n Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets\u2014those hearts pierced by the grey\n         lead,\n Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughtered\n         vitality.\n They live in other young men, O kings!\n They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!\n They were purified by death\u2014they were taught and exalted.\n Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its\n         turn to bear seed,\n Which the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.\n Not  a  disembodied  spirit  can  the  weapons  of  tyrants  let  loose,  But  it  stalks  invisibly  over  the  earth,\n whispering, counselling, cautioning.\n Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.\n Is the house shut? Is the master away?\n Nevertheless, be ready\u2014"},{"Unnamed: 0":15,"Keys":"TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR REVOLTRESS.\n","Values":" Courage! my brother or my sister!\n Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs;\n That is nothing that is quelled by one or two failures, or any number of\n         failures,\n Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any\n         unfaithfulness,\n Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.\n What we believe in waits latent for ever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagoes\n of the sea.\n What  we  believe  in  invites  no  one,  promises  nothing,  sits  in  calmness  and  light,  is  positive  and\n composed, knows no discouragement, Waiting patiently, waiting its time.\n The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and retreat,\n The infidel triumphs\u2014or supposes he triumphs,\n The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-\n         balls, do their work,\n The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,\n The great speakers and writers are exiled\u2014they lie sick in distant lands,\n The cause is asleep\u2014the strongest throats are still, choked\n with their own blood,\n The young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;\n But, for all this, Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel\n         entered into possession.\n When Liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second\n         or third to go,\n It waits for all the rest to go\u2014it is the last.\n When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,\n And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from\n         any part of the earth,\n Then only shall Liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,\n And the infidel and the tyrant come into possession.\n Then courage! revolter! revoltress!\n For till all ceases neither must you cease.\n I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor\n         what anything is for,)\n But I will search carefully for it even in being foiled,\n In defeat, poverty, imprisonment\u2014for they too are great.\n Did we think victory great?\n So it is\u2014But now it seems to me, when it cannot be helped, that defeat is\n         great,\n And that death and dismay are great.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":16,"Keys":"DRUM TAPS.\n","Values":null},{"Unnamed: 0":17,"Keys":"MANHATTAN ARMING.\n","Values":" First, O songs, for a prelude,\n Lightly strike on the stretched tympanum, pride and joy in my city,\n How she led the rest to arms\u2014how she gave the cue,\n How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang;\n O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!\n O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!\n How you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent\n         hand;\n How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in\n         their stead;\n How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of\n         soldiers,)\n How Manhattan drum-taps led.\n Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading;\n Forty years as a pageant\u2014till unawares, the Lady of this teeming and\n         turbulent city,\n Sleepless, amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,\n With her million children around her\u2014suddenly,\n At dead of night, at news from the South,\n Incensed, struck with clenched hand the pavement.\n A shock electric\u2014the night sustained it;\n Till, with ominous hum, our hive at daybreak poured out its myriads.\n From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all the doorways,\n Leaped they tumultuous\u2014and lo! Manhattan arming.\n To the drum-taps prompt,\n The young men falling in and arming;\n The mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-smith's hammer,\n         tossed aside with precipitation;\n The lawyer leaving his office, and arming\u2014the judge leaving the court;\n The driver deserting his waggon in the street, jumping down, throwing the\n         reins abruptly down on the horses' backs;\n The salesman leaving the store\u2014the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;\n Squads gathering everywhere by common consent, and arming;\n The new recruits, even boys\u2014the old men show them how to wear their\n         accoutrements\u2014they buckle the straps carefully;\n Outdoors arming\u2014indoors arming\u2014the flash of the musket-barrels;\n The white tents cluster in camps\u2014the armed sentries around\u2014the sunrise\n         cannon, and again at sunset;\n Armed regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from\n         the wharves;\n How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their\n         guns on their shoulders!\n How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their\n         clothes and knapsacks covered with dust!\n The blood of the city up\u2014armed! armed! the cry everywhere;\n The flags flung out from the steeples of churches, and from all the public\n         buildings and stores;\n The tearful parting\u2014the mother kisses her son\u2014the son kisses his mother;\n Loth is the mother to part\u2014yet not a word does she speak to detain him;\n The tumultuous escort\u2014the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way;\n The unpent enthusiasm\u2014the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites;\n The artillery\u2014the silent cannons, bright as gold, drawn along, rumble\n         lightly over the stones;\n Silent cannons\u2014soon to cease your silence,\n Soon, unlimbered, to begin the red business!\n All the mutter of preparation\u2014all the determined arming;\n The hospital service\u2014the lint, bandages, and medicines;\n The women volunteering for nurses\u2014the work begun for, in earnest\u2014no mere\n         parade now;\n War! an armed race is advancing!\u2014the welcome for battle\u2014no turning away;\n War! be it weeks, months, or years\u2014an armed race is advancing to welcome\n         it.\n Mannahatta a-march!\u2014and it's O to sing it well!\n It's O for a manly life in the camp!\n And the sturdy artillery!\n The guns, bright as gold\u2014the work for giants\u2014to serve well the guns:\n Unlimber them! no more, as the past forty years, for salutes for courtesies\n merely;\n Put in something else now besides powder and wadding.\n And you, Lady of Ships! you, Mannahatta!\n Old matron of the city! this proud, friendly, turbulent city!\n Often in peace and wealth you were pensive, or covertly frowned amid all\n your children;\n But now you smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta!\n Armed year! year of the struggle!\n No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!\n Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;\n But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a\n         rifle on your shoulder,\n With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands\u2014with a knife in the\n         belt at your side,\n As I heard you shouting loud\u2014your sonorous voice ringing across the\n         continent;\n Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,\n Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in\n         Manhattan;\n Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,\n Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the\n         Alleghanies;\n Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio\n         river;\n Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on\n         the mountain-top,\n Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing\n         weapons, robust year;\n Heard your determined voice, launched forth again and again;\n Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon,\n I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":18,"Keys":"THE UPRISING.\n","Values":" Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer\n         sweep!\n Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what the earth gave me;\n Long I roamed the woods of the North\u2014long I watched Niagara pouring;\n I travelled the prairies over, and slept on their breast\u2014I crossed the\n         Nevadas,\n I crossed the plateaus;\n I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sailed out to sea;\n I sailed through the storm, I was refreshed by the storm;\n I watched with joy the threatening maws of the waves;\n I marked the white combs where they careered so high, curling over;\n I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;\n Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and\n         powerful!)\n Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellowed after the lightning;\n Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid\n         the din they chased each other across the sky;\n \u2014These, and such as these, I, elate, saw\u2014saw with wonder, yet pensive and\n         masterful;\n All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;\n Yet there with my soul I fed\u2014I fed content, supercilious.\n 'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!\n Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;\n Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;\n Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;\n Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;\n Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the North-west, are you indeed\n         inexhaustible?)\n What, to pavements and homesteads here\u2014what were those storms of the\n         mountains and sea?\n What, to passions I witness around me to-day, was the sea risen?\n Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?\n Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;\n Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front\u2014Cincinnati, Chicago,\n         unchained;\n \u2014What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!\n How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!\n How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of\n         lightning!\n How DEMOCRACY with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the\n         dark by those flashes of lightning!\n Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,\n In a lull of the deafening confusion.\n Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!\n And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!\n Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;\n My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment.\n Long had I walked my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half\n         satisfied;\n One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawled on the ground before\n         me,\n Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing\n         low;\n \u2014The cities I loved so well I abandoned and left\u2014I sped to the\n         certainties suitable to me\n Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature's\n         dauntlessness,\n I refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only;\n I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire\u2014on the water and air I waited\n         long.\n \u2014But now I no longer wait\u2014I am fully satisfied\u2014I am glutted;\n I have witnessed the true lightning\u2014I have witnessed my cities electric;\n I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;\n Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,\n No more on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":19,"Keys":"BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!\n","Values":" Beat! beat! drums!\u2014Blow! bugles! blow!\n Through the windows\u2014through doors\u2014burst like a force of ruthless men,\n Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;\n Into the school where the scholar is studying:\n Leave not the bridegroom quiet\u2014no happiness must he have now with his\n         bride;\n Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his\n         grain;\n So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums\u2014so shrill you bugles blow.\n Beat! beat! drums!\u2014Blow! bugles! blow!\n Over the traffic of cities\u2014over the rumble of wheels in the streets:\n Are beds prepared, for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must\n         sleep in those beds;\n No bargainers' bargains by day\u2014no brokers or speculators\u2014Would they\n         continue?\n Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?\n Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?\n Then rattle quicker, heavier, drums\u2014you bugles wilder blow.\n Beat! beat! drums!\u2014Blow! bugles! blow!\n Make no parley\u2014stop for no expostulation;\n Mind not the timid\u2014mind not the weeper or prayer;\n Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;\n Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties;\n Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the\n         hearses,\n So strong you thump, O terrible drums\u2014so loud you bugles blow.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":20,"Keys":"SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK.\n","Values":"POET.\n O a new song, a free song,\n Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,\n By the wind's voice and that of the drum,\n By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's\n         voice,\n Low on the ground and high in the air,\n On the ground where father and child stand,\n In the upward air where their eyes turn,\n Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.\n Words! book-words! what are you?\n Words no more, for hearken and see,\n My song is there in the open air\u2014and I must sing,\n With the banner and pennant a-flapping.\n I'll weave the chord and twine in,\n Man's desire and babe's desire\u2014I'll twine them in, I'll put in life;\n I'll put the bayonet's flashing point\u2014I'll let bullets and slugs whizz;\n I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy;\n Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,\n With the banner and pennant a-flapping.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":21,"Keys":"BANNER AND PENNANT.\n","Values":"Come up here, bard, bard;\n Come up here, soul, soul;\n Come up here, dear little child,\n To fly in the clouds and winds with us, and play with the measureless\n         light.\n CHILD.\n Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?\n And what does it say to me all the while?\n FATHER.\n Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky;\n And nothing at all to you it says. But look you, my babe,\n Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops\n         opening;\n And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods:\n These! ah, these! how valued and toiled for, these!\n How envied by all the earth!\n POET.\n Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high;\n On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels;\n On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;\n The great steady wind from west and west-by-south,\n Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters.\n But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;\n I am not the wind, with girlish laughter;\n Not the immense wind which strengthens\u2014not the wind which lashes;\n Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death:\n But I am of that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,\n Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land;\n Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings,\n And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and\n         pennant,\n Aloft there flapping and flapping.\n CHILD.\n O father, it is alive\u2014it is full of people\u2014it has children!\n O now it seems to me it is talking to its children!\n I hear it\u2014it talks to me\u2014O it is wonderful!\n O it stretches\u2014it spreads and runs so fast! O my father,\n It is so broad it covers the whole sky!\n FATHER.\n Cease, cease, my foolish babe,\n What you are saying is sorrowful to me\u2014much it displeases me;\n Behold with the rest, again I say\u2014behold not banners and pennants aloft;\n But the well-prepared pavements behold\u2014and mark the solid-walled houses.\n BANNER AND PENNANT.\n Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan;\n Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,\n Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground,\n Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-ploughs are ploughing;\n Speak, O bard! point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all\u2014and\n         yet we know not why;\n For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting nothing,\n Only flapping in the wind?\n POET.\n I hear and see not strips of cloth alone;\n I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry;\n I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men\u2014I hear LIBERTY!\n I hear the drums beat, and the trumpets blowing;\n I myself move abroad, swift-rising, flying then;\n I use the wings of the land-bird, and use the wings of the sea-bird, and\n         look down as from a height.\n I do not deny the precious results of peace\u2014I see populous cities, with\n         wealth incalculable;\n I see numberless farms\u2014I see the farmers working in their fields or barns;\n I see mechanics working\u2014I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or\n         finished;\n I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the\n         locomotives;\n I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans;\n I see far in the west the immense area of grain\u2014I dwell a while, hovering;\n I pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern\n         plantation, and again to California;\n Sweeping the whole, I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earned\n         wages;\n See the identity formed out of thirty-six spacious and haughty States, (and\n         many more to come;)\n See forts on the shores of harbours\u2014see ships sailing in and out;\n Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthened pennant shaped like a\n         sword\n Runs swiftly up, indicating war and defiance\u2014And now the halyards have\n         raised it,\n Side of my banner broad and blue\u2014side of my starry banner,\n Discarding peace over all the sea and land.\n BANNER AND PENNANT.\n Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!\n No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone;\n We can be terror and carnage also, and are so now.\n Not now are we one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor\n         ten;)\n Nor market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the city;\n But these, and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below,\n         are ours;\n And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small;\n And the fields they moisten are ours, and the crops, and the fruits are\n         ours;\n Bays and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours\u2014and we over all,\n Over the area spread below, the three millions of square miles\u2014the\n         capitals,\n The thirty-five millions of people\u2014O bard! in life and death supreme,\n We, even we, from this day flaunt out masterful, high up above,\n Not for the present alone, for a thousand years, chanting through you\n This song to the soul of one poor little child.\n CHILD.\n O my father, I like not the houses;\n They will never to me be anything\u2014nor do I like money!\n But to mount up there I would like, O father dear\u2014that banner I like;\n That pennant I would be, and must be.\n FATHER.\n Child of mine, you fill me with anguish,\n To be that pennant would be too fearful;\n Little you know what it is this day, and henceforth for ever;\n It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything;\n Forward to stand in front of wars\u2014and O, such wars!\u2014what have you to do\n         with them?\n With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?\n POET.\n Demons and death then I sing;\n Put in all, aye all, will I\u2014sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so\n         broad and blue,\n And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,\n Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land, and the liquid wash of the sea;\n And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines;\n And the whirr of drums, and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun\n         shining south;\n And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my\n         western shore the same;\n And all between those shores, and my ever-running Mississippi, with bends\n         and chutes;\n And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri;\n The CONTINENT\u2014devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom,\n Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of\n         all.\n BANNER AND PENNANT.\n Aye all! for ever, for all!\n From sea to sea, north and south, east and west,\n Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole;\n No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,\n But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,\n Croaking like crows here in the wind.\n POET.\n My limbs, my veins dilate;\n The blood of the world has filled me full\u2014my theme is clear at last.\n \u2014Banner so broad, advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and\n         resolute;\n I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafened and blinded;\n My sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a little child taught\n         me;)\n I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call and demand;\n Insensate! insensate! yet I at any rate chant you, O banner!\n Not houses of peace are you, nor any nor all their prosperity; if need be,\n you shall have every one of those houses to destroy them;\n You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of\n         comfort, built with money;\n May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, unless you, above them and all,\n         stand fast.\n \u2014O banner! not money so precious are you, nor farm produce you, nor the\n         material good nutriment,\n Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships;\n Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying\n         cargoes,\n Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,\u2014But you, as henceforth I see\n         you,\n Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, ever-enlarging\n         stars;\n Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touched by the sun, measuring the\n         sky,\n Passionately seen and yearned for by one poor little child,\n While others remain busy, or smartly talking, for ever teaching thrift,\n         thrift;\n O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so\n         curious,\n Out of reach\u2014an idea only\u2014yet furiously fought for, risking bloody\n         death\u2014loved by me!\n So loved! O you banner, leading the day, with stars brought from the night!\n Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all\u2014O banner and\n         pennant!\n I too leave the rest\u2014great as it is, it is nothing\u2014houses, machines are\n         nothing\u2014I see them not;\n I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing\n         you only,\n Flapping up there in the wind.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":22,"Keys":"THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME.\n","Values":"By the bivouac's fitful flame,\n A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;\u2014but first I\n         note\n The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,\n The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire\u2014the silence;\n Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;\n The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily\n         watching me;)\n While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,\n Of life and death\u2014of home and the past and loved, and of those that are\n         far away;\n A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,\n By the bivouac's fitful flame.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":23,"Keys":"BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE.\n","Values":"I see before me now a travelling army halting;\n Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;\n Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;\n Broken with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen;\n The numerous camp-fires scattered near and far, some away up on the\n         mountain;\n The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering;\n And over all, the sky\u2014the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the\n         eternal stars.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":24,"Keys":"CITY OF SHIPS.\n","Values":"City of ships!\n (O the black ships! O the fierce ships!\n O the beautiful, sharp-bowed steam-ships and sail-ships!)\n City of the world! (for all races are here;\n All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)\n City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!\n City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out,\n         with eddies and foam!\n City of wharves and stores! city of tall fa\u00e7ades of marble and iron!\n Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!\n Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!\n Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city!\n Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!\n I have rejected nothing you offered me\u2014whom you adopted, I have adopted;\n Good or bad, I never question you\u2014I love all\u2014I do not condemn anything;\n I chant and celebrate all that is yours\u2014yet peace no more;\n In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine;\n War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":25,"Keys":"VIGIL ON THE FIELD.\n","Values":"VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night,\n When you, my son and my comrade, dropped at my side that day.\n One look I but gave, which your dear eyes returned with a look I shall\n         never forget;\n One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reached up as you lay on the ground.\n Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;\n Till, late in the night relieved, to the place at last again I made my way;\n Found you in death so cold, dear comrade\u2014found your body, son of\n         responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)\n Bared your face in the starlight\u2014curious the scene\u2014cool blew the moderate\n         night-wind.\n Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield\n         spreading;\n Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night.\n But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh\u2014Long, long I gazed;\n Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in\n         my hands;\n Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you, dearest comrade\u2014\n Not a tear, not a word;\n Vigil of silence, love, and death\u2014vigil for you, my son and my soldier,\n As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;\n Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your\n         death,\n I faithfully loved you and cared for you living\u2014I think we shall surely\n         meet again;)\n Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appeared,\n My comrade I wrapped in his blanket, enveloped well his form,\n Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head, and carefully\n         under feet;\n And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in\n         his rude-dug grave, I deposited;\n Ending my vigil strange with that\u2014vigil of night and battlefield dim;\n Vigil for boy of responding kisses, never again on earth responding;\n Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget\u2014how as day\n         brightened\n I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,\n And buried him where he fell.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":26,"Keys":"THE FLAG.\n","Values":"Bathed in war's perfume\u2014delicate flag!\n O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful\n         woman!\n O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they\n         arm with joy!\n O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!\n O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!\n Flag like the eyes of women.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":27,"Keys":"THE WOUNDED.\n","Values":"A march in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown;\n A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;\n Our army foiled with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;\n Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building;\n We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted\n         building.\n 'Tis a large old church, at the crossing roads\u2014'tis now an impromptu\n         hospital;\n \u2014Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and\n         poems ever made:\n Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving, candles and lamps,\n And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and clouds\n         of smoke;\n By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the\n         pews laid down;\n At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to\n         death, (he is shot in the abdomen;)\n I staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster's face is white as a lily;)\n Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene, fain to absorb it all;\n Faces, varieties, postures, beyond description, most in obscurity, some of\n         them dead;\n Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the\n         odour of blood;\n The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers\u2014the yard outside\n         also filled;\n Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-\n         spasm sweating;\n An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls;\n The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the\n         torches;\n These I resume as I chant\u2014I see again the forms, I smell the odour;\n Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in.\n But first I bend to the dying lad\u2014his eyes open\u2014a half-smile gives he me;\n Then the eyes close, calmly close: and I speed forth to the darkness,\n Resuming, marching, as ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,\n The unknown road still marching.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":28,"Keys":"A SIGHT IN CAMP.\n","Values":" A sight in camp in the daybreak grey and dim,\n As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,\n As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,\n Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying;\n Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,\n Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.\n Curious, I halt, and silent stand; Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift\n the blanket; Who are you, elderly man, so gaunt and grim, with well-greyed hair, and flesh all sunken about\n the eyes? Who are you, my dear comrade?\n Then to the second I step\u2014And who are you, my child and darling?\n Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?\n Then to the third\u2014a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory: Young man, I\n think I know you\u2014I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ Himself; Dead and divine and brother\n of all, and here again He lies.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":29,"Keys":"A GRAVE.\n","Values":" As toilsome I wandered Virginia's woods,\n To the music of rustling leaves kicked by my feet\u2014for 'twas autumn\u2014\n I marked at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;\n Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat\u2014easily all could I\n         understand;\n The halt of a mid-day hour\u2014when, Up! no time to lose! Yet this sign left\n On a tablet scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave,\n Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.\n Long, long I muse,\u2014then on my way go wandering,\n Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life.\n Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt,\u2014alone, or in the\n         crowded street,\u2014\n Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in\n         Virginia's woods,\n Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":30,"Keys":"THE DRESSER.\n","Values":" An old man bending, I come among new faces,\n Years, looking backward, resuming, in answer to children,\n \"Come tell us, old man,\" (as from young men and maidens that love me, Years\n         hence) \"of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,\n Of unsurpassed heroes\u2014(was one side so brave? the other was equally brave)\n Now be witness again\u2014paint the mightiest armies of earth;\n Of those armies, so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to tell us?\n What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,\n Of hard-fought engagements, or sieges tremendous, what deepest remains?\"\n O maidens and young men I love, and that love me,\n What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking\n         recalls,\n Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust;\n In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush\n         of successful charge;\n Enter the captured works,\u2026yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade,\n Pass, and are gone; they fade\u2014I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers'\n         joys;\n (Both I remember well\u2014many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was\n         content.)\n But in silence, in dreams' projections,\n While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,\n So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,\n In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the\n         doors\u2014(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without\n         noise, and be of strong heart.)\n Bearing the bandages, water, and sponge,\n Straight and swift to my wounded I go,\n Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in;\n Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground;\n Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roofed hospital;\n To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return;\n To each and all, one after another, I draw near\u2014not one do I miss;\n An attendant follows, holding a tray\u2014he carries a refuse-pail,\n Soon to be filled with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled again.\n I onward go, I stop,\n With hinged knees and steady hand, to dress wounds;\n I am firm with each\u2014the pangs are sharp, yet unavoidable;\n One turns to me his appealing eyes\u2014poor boy! I never knew you,\n Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you if that would\n         save you.\n On, on I go\u2014(open, doors of time! open, hospital doors!)\n The crushed head I dress (poor crazed hand, tear not the bandage away;)\n The neck of the cavalry-man, with the bullet through and through, I\n         examine;\n Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life\n         struggles hard;\n Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!\n In mercy come quickly.\n From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,\n I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;\n Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curved neck, and side-falling\n         head;\n His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody\n         stump,\n And has not yet looked on it.\n I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;\n But a day or two more\u2014for see, the frame all wasted and sinking,\n And the yellow-blue countenance see.\n I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,\n Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so\n         offensive,\n While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail.\n I am faithful, I do not give out;\n The fractured thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,\n These and more I dress with impassive hand\u2014yet deep in my breast a fire, a\n         burning flame.\n Thus in silence, in dreams' projections,\n Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;\n The hurt and the wounded I pacify with soothing hand,\n I sit by the restless all the dark night\u2014some are so young,\n Some suffer so much\u2014I recall the experience sweet and sad.\n Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,\n Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":31,"Keys":"A LETTER FROM CAMP.\n","Values":" \"Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;\n And come to the front door, mother\u2014here's a letter from thy dear son.\"\n Lo, 'tis autumn;\n Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,\n Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate\n         wind;\n Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised vines;\n Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?\n Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?\n Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds; Below, too, all\n calm, all vital and beautiful\u2014and the farm prospers well.\n Down in the fields all prospers well;\n But now from the fields come, father\u2014come at the daughter's call;\n And come to the entry, mother\u2014to the front door come, right away.\n Fast as she can she hurries\u2014something ominous\u2014her steps trembling;\n She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap.\n Open the envelope quickly;\n O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed;\n O a strange hand writes for our dear son\u2014O stricken mother's soul!\n All swims before her eyes\u2014flashes with black\u2014she catches the main words\n         only;\n Sentences broken\u2014\"gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken\n         to hospital,\n At present low, but will soon be better.\"\n Ah, now the single figure to me,\n Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,\n Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,\n By the jamb of a door leans.\n \"Grieve not so, dear mother,\" the just-grown daughter speaks through her\n         sobs;\n The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed;\n \"See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.\"\n Alas! poor boy, he will never be better, (nor maybe needs to be better,\n         that brave and simple soul;)\n While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already;\n The only son is dead.\n But the mother needs to be better;\n She, with thin form, presently dressed in black;\n By day her meals untouched\u2014then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,\n In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,\n O that she might withdraw unnoticed\u2014silent from life escape and withdraw,\n To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":32,"Keys":"WAR DREAMS.\n","Values":" In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle,\n Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, of that indescribable look,\n Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide\u2014\n     I dream, I dream, I dream.\n Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains, Of the skies so beauteous after the storm, and at night\n the  moon  so  unearthly  bright,  Shining  sweetly,  shining  down,  where  we  dig  the  trenches,  and  gather  the\n heaps\u2014 I dream, I dream, I dream.\n Long have they passed, long lapsed\u2014faces, and trenches, and fields:\n Long through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the\n fallen\n Onward I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night,\n     I dream, I dream, I dream.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":33,"Keys":"THE VETERAN'S VISION.\n","Values":"While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,\n And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the mystic midnight passes,\n And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath\n         of my infant,\n There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me.\n The engagement opens there and then, in my busy brain unreal;\n The skirmishers begin\u2014they crawl cautiously ahead\u2014I hear the irregular\n         snap! snap!\n I hear the sound of the different missiles\u2014the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of\n         the rifle-balls;\n I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds\u2014I hear the great\n         shells shrieking as they pass;\n The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick,\n         tumultuous, now the contest rages!)\n All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;\n The crashing and smoking\u2014the pride of the men in their pieces;\n The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the\n         right time;\n After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the\n         effect;\n \u2014Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging\u2014the young colonel leads\n         himself this time, with brandished sword;\n I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up\u2014no delay;\n I breathe the suffocating smoke\u2014then the flat clouds hover low, concealing\n         all;\n Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either\n         side;\n Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of\n         officers;\n While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout\n         of applause, (some special success;)\n And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a\n         devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my\n         soul;\n And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions\u2014batteries, cavalry,\n         moving hither and thither;\n The falling, dying, I heed not\u2014the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not\u2014\n         some to the rear are hobbling;\n Grime, heat, rush\u2014aides-de-camp galloping by, or on a full run:\n With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in\n         my vision I hear or see,)\n And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-coloured rockets.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":34,"Keys":"O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY.\n","Values":"O tan-faced prairie boy!\n Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift;\n Praises and presents came, and nourishing food\u2014till at last, among the\n         recruits,\n You came, taciturn, with nothing to give\u2014we but looked on each other,\n When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":35,"Keys":"MANHATTAN FACES.\n","Values":" Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;\n Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;\n Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows;\n Give me an arbour, give me the trellised grape;\n Give me fresh corn and wheat\u2014give me serene-moving animals, teaching\n         content;\n Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the\n         Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;\n Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk\n         undisturbed;\n Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire;\n Give me a perfect child\u2014give me, away, aside from the noise of the world,\n         a rural domestic life;\n Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved, recluse by myself, for my\n         own ears only;\n Give me solitude\u2014give me Nature\u2014give me again, O Nature, your primal\n         sanities!\n \u2014These, demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and\n         racked by the war-strife,\n These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,\n While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city;\n Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,\n Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up,\n Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul\u2014you give me for ever\n         faces;\n O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;\n I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for.\n Keep your splendid silent sun;\n Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;\n Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards;\n Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-month bees hum.\n Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless\n         along the trottoirs!\n Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by\n         the thousand!\n Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day!\n Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!\n Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching\u2014give me the sound of the\n         trumpets and drums!\n The soldiers in companies or regiments\u2014some starting away, flushed and\n         reckless;\n Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks\u2014young, yet very old,\n         worn, marching, noticing nothing;\n \u2014Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships!\n O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!\n The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!\n The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion, for me! the torchlight\n         procession!\n The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons\n         following;\n People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;\n Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as\n         now;\n The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the\n         sight of the wounded;\n Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus\u2014with varied chorus\n         and light of the sparkling eyes;\n Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":36,"Keys":"OVER THE CARNAGE.\n","Values":" Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,\u2014\n Be not disheartened\u2014Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;\n Those who love each other shall become invincible\u2014they shall yet make\n         Columbia victorious.\n Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be victorious!\n You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.\n No danger shall baulk Columbia's lovers;\n If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.\n One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade;\n From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be\n         friends triune,\n More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.\n To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come;\n Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.\n It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection;\n The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly;\n The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,\n The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.\n These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron;\n I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.\n Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?\n Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?\n \u2014Nay\u2014nor the world nor any living thing will so cohere.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":37,"Keys":"THE MOTHER OF ALL.\n","Values":"Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all,\n Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields,\n         gazing;\n As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.\n \"Absorb them well, O my earth!\" she cried\u2014\"I charge you, lose not my sons!\n         lose not an atom;\n And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood;\n And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly,\n And all you essences of soil and growth\u2014and you, O my rivers' depths;\n And you mountain-sides\u2014and the woods where my dear children's blood,\n         trickling, reddened;\n And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,\n My dead absorb\u2014my young men's beautiful bodies absorb\u2014and their precious,\n         precious, precious blood;\n Which, holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year\n         hence,\n In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence;\n In blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings\u2014give my\n         immortal heroes;\n Exhale me them centuries hence\u2014breathe me their breath\u2014let not an atom be\n         lost.\n O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!\n Exhale them, perennial, sweet death, years, centuries hence.\"\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":38,"Keys":"CAMPS OF GREEN.\n","Values":" Not alone our camps of white, O soldiers,\n When, as ordered forward, after a long march,\n Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens, we halt for the night;\n Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in\n         our tracks;\n Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle;\n Outposts of pickets posted, surrounding, alert through the dark,\n And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety;\n Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums,\n We rise up refreshed, the night and sleep passed over, and resume our\n         journey,\n Or proceed to battle.\n Lo! the camps of the tents of green,\n Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling,\n With a mystic army, (is it too ordered forward? is it too only halting a\n         while,\n Till night and sleep pass over?)\n Now in those camps of green\u2014in their tents dotting the world;\n In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them\u2014in the old and young,\n Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and\n         silent there at last;\n Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of us and ours and all,\n Of our corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and\n         generals all,\n And of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fight,\n There without hatred we shall all meet.\n For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of\n         green;\n But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign,\n Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":39,"Keys":"DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS.\n","Values":"   The last sunbeam\n Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath\n On the pavement here\u2014and, there beyond, it is looking\n   Down a new-made double grave.\n   Lo! the moon ascending!\n Up from the east, the silvery round moon;\n Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon;\n   Immense and silent moon.\n   I see a sad procession,\n And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles;\n All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,\n   As with voices and with tears.\n   I hear the great drums pounding,\n And the small drums steady whirring;\n And every blow of the great convulsive drums\n   Strikes me through and through.\n   For the son is brought with the father;\n In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;\n Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,\n   And the double grave awaits them.\n   Now nearer blow the bugles,\n And the drums strike more convulsive;\n And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,\n   And the strong dead-march enwraps me.\n   In the eastern sky up-buoying,\n The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,\n 'Tis some mother's large, transparent face,\n   In heaven brighter growing.\n   O strong dead-march, you please me!\n O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!\n O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!\n   What I have I also give you.\n     The moon gives you light,\n And the bugles and the drums give you music;\n And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,\n     My heart gives you love.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":40,"Keys":"SURVIVORS.\n","Values":"How solemn, as one by one,\n As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty\u2014as the men file by where I\n         stand;\n As the faces, the masks appear\u2014as I glance at the faces, studying the\n         masks;\n As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you\n         are;\u2014\n How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in the ranks, and to\n         you!\n I see, behind each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul.\n O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,\n Nor the bayonet stab what you really are.\n \u2014The soul, yourself, I see, great as any, good as the best,\n Waiting secure and content,\u2014which the bullet could never kill,\n Nor the bayonet stab, O friend!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":41,"Keys":"HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS.\n","Values":" One breath, O my silent soul!\n A perfumed thought\u2014no more I ask, for the sake of all dead soldiers.\n Buglers off in my armies! At present I ask not you to sound; Not at the head of my cavalry, all on their\n spirited  horses,  With  their  sabres  drawn  and  glistening,  and  carbines  clanking  by  their  thighs\u2014(ah,  my\n brave horsemen! My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, With all the perils, were\n yours!)\n Nor you drummers\u2014neither at reveill\u00e9, at dawn,\n Nor the long roll alarming the camp\u2014nor even the muffled beat for a\n         burial;\n Nothing from you, this time, O drummers, bearing my warlike drums.\n But aside from these, and the crowd's hurrahs, and the land's\n         congratulations,\n Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and voiceless,\n I chant this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead soldiers.\n Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet;\n Draw close, but speak not.\n Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender!\n Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my companions;\n Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live!\n Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet are the musical voices\n         sounding;\n But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.\n Dearest comrades! all now is over;\n But love is not over\u2014and what love, O comrades!\n Perfume from battlefields rising\u2014up from foetor arising.\n Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal love!\n Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers.\n Perfume all! make all wholesome!\n O love! O chant! solve all with the last chemistry.\n Give me exhaustless\u2014make me a fountain,\n That I exhale love from me wherever I go,\n For the sake of all dead soldiers.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":42,"Keys":"SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE.\n","Values":"Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!\n Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets\u2014\n Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, yet onward ever unfaltering pressing!\n Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit!\n That with muttering voice, through the years now closed, like a tireless\n         phantom flitted,\n Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum;\n \u2014Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates\n         round me;\n As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles;\n While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders;\n While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;\n While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the\n         distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,\n Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left,\n Evenly, lightly, rising and falling, as the steps keep time:\n \u2014Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next\n         day;\n Touch my mouth, ere you depart\u2014press my lips close!\n Leave me your pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with currents\n         convulsive!\n Let them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone;\n Let them identify you to the future in these songs!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":43,"Keys":"RECONCILIATION.\n","Values":"Word over all, beautiful as the sky!\n Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly\n         lost;\n That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash\n         again, and ever again, this soiled world.\n For my enemy is dead\u2014a man divine as myself is dead.\n I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin\u2014I draw near;\n I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":44,"Keys":"AFTER THE WAR.\n","Values":"To the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last;\n Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead:\n But forth from my tent emerging for good\u2014loosing, untying the tent-ropes;\n In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and\n         vistas, again to peace restored;\n To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond\u2014to the south\n         and the north;\n To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs,\n To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace,\n To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,\n To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods,\n To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide,\n To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air.\n And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)\n The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely;\n The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son:\u2014\n The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end;\n But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":45,"Keys":"WALT WHITMAN\n","Values":null},{"Unnamed: 0":46,"Keys":"ASSIMILATIONS.\n","Values":" There was a child went forth every day;\n And the first object he looked upon, that object he became;\n And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the\n         day, or for many years, or tretching cycles of years.\n The  early  lilacs  became  part  of  this  child, And  grass,  and  white  and  red  morning-glories, and  white\n and  red  clover,  and  the  song  of  the  phoebe-bird,And  the Third-month  lambs,  and  the  sow's  pink-faint\n litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the\n pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there\u2014and the beautiful, curious liquid,\n And  the  water-plants  with  their  graceful  fiat  heads\u2014all  became  part  of  him. The  field-sprouts  of  Fourth-\n month and Fifth-month became part or him;\nWinter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, And the\n apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by\n the  road; And  the  old  drunkard  staggering  home  from  the  outhouse  of  the  tavern,  whence  he  had  lately\n risen, And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that passed, and\n the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the\n changes of city and country, wherever he went.\n His own parents;\n He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb, and\n         birthed him,\n They gave this child more of themselves than that;\n They gave him afterward every day\u2014they became part of him.\n The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;\n The mother with mild words\u2014clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour\n         falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;\n The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust;\n The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,\n The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture\u2014the yearning\n         and swelling heart,\n Affection that will not be gainsaid\u2014the sense of what is real\u2014the thought\n         if after all it should prove unreal,\n The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time\u2014the curious whether\n         and how\u2014\n Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?\n Men and women crowding fast in the streets\u2014if they are not flashes and\n         specks, what are they?\n The streets themselves, and the fa\u00e7ades of houses, and goods in the\n         windows,\n Vehicles, teams, the heavy-planked wharves\u2014the huge crossing at the\n         ferries,\n The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset\u2014the river between;\n Shadows, aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or\n         brown, three miles off;\n The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide\u2014the little boat\n         slack-towed astern,\n The hurrying tumbling waves quick-broken crests slapping,\n The strata of coloured clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary\n         by itself-the spread of purity it lies motionless in,\n The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and\n         shore mud;\u2014\n These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes,\n         and will always go forth every day.\n \n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":47,"Keys":"A WORD OUT OF THE SEA.\n","Values":" Out of the rocked cradle,\n Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,\n Out of the Ninth-month midnight,\n Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his\n         bed, wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot,\n Down from the showered halo,\n Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting; as if they were\n         alive,\n Out from the patches of briars and blackberries,\n From the memories of the birds that chanted to me,\n From your memories, sad brother\u2014from the fitful risings and fallings I\n         heard,\n From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,\n From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent\n         mist,\n From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,\n From the myriad thence-aroused words,\n From the word stronger and more delicious than any,\u2014\n From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,\n As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,\n Borne hither\u2014ere all eludes me, hurriedly,\u2014\n A man\u2014yet by these tears a little boy again,\n Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,\n I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,\n Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond\n         them,\n A reminiscence sing.\n Once, Paumanok,\n When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass\n         was growing,\n Up this sea-shore, in some briars,\n Two guests from Alabama\u2014two together,\n And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown;\n And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand,\n And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent,\n         with bright eyes;\n And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never\n         disturbing them,\n Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.\n _Shine! shine! shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask\u2014we two together.\n Two together!\n Winds blow South, or winds blow North,\n Day come white or night come black,\n Home, or rivers and mountains from home,\n Singing all time, minding no time,\n If we two but keep together_.\n Till of a sudden,\n Maybe killed, unknown to her mate,\n One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest,\n Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next,\n Nor ever appeared again.\n And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the sea,\n And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather,\n Over the hoarse surging of the sea,\n Or flitting from briar to briar by day,\n I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird,\n The solitary guest from Alabama.\n Blow! blow! blow! Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore! I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate\n to me.\n Yes, when the stars glistened.\n All night long, on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake,\n Down, almost amid the slapping waves,\n Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears.\n He called on his mate;\n He poured forth the meanings which I, of all men, know.\n Yes, my brother, I know;\n The rest might not\u2014but I have treasured every note;\n For once, and more than once, dimly, down to the beach gliding,\n Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,\n Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after\n         their sorts,\n The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,\n I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,\n Listened long and long.\n Listened, to keep, to sing\u2014now translating the notes,\n Following you, my brother.\n _Soothe! soothe! soothe!\n Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,\n And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close,\u2014\n But my love soothes not me, not me.\n Low hangs the moon\u2014it rose late;\n O it is lagging\u2014O I think it is heavy with love, with love.\n O madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land,\n With love\u2014with love.\n O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers?\n What is that little black thing I see there in the white?\n Loud! loud! loud!\n Loud. I call to you, my love!\n High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves;\n Surely you must know who is here, is here;\n You must know who I am, my love.\n Low-hanging moon!\n What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?\n O it is the shape, the shape of my mate!\n O moon, do not keep her from me any longer!\n Land! land! O land!\n Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again, if\n         you only would;\n For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.\n O rising stars!\n Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.\n O throat! O trembling throat!\n Sound clearer through the atmosphere!\n Pierce the woods, the earth;\n Somewhere, listening to catch you, must be the one I want.\n Shake out, carols!\n Solitary here\u2014the night's carols!\n Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols!\n Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!\n O, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea!\n O reckless, despairing carols!\n But soft! sink low;\n Soft! let me just murmur;\n And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea;\n For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,\n So faint\u2014I must be still, be still to listen;\n But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.\n Hither, my love!\n Here I am! Here!\n With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you;\n This gentle call is for you, my love, for you!\n Do not be decoyed elsewhere!\n That is the whistle of the wind\u2014it is not my voice;\n That is the fluttering, the flattering of the spray;\n Those are the shadows of leaves.\n O darkness! O in vain!\n O I am very sick and sorrowful!\n O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon the sea!\n O troubled reflection in the sea!\n O throat! O throbbing heart!\n O all!\u2014and I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.!\n Yet I murmur, murmur on!\n O murmurs\u2014you yourselves make me continue to sing, I know not why.\n O past! O life! O songs of joy!\n In the air\u2014in the woods\u2014over fields;\n Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!\n But my love no more, no more with me!\n We two together no more_!\n The aria sinking;\n All else continuing\u2014the stars shining,\n The winds blowing\u2014the notes of the bird continuous echoing,\n With angry moans the fierce old Mother incessantly moaning,\n On the sands of Paumanok's shore, grey and rustling;\n The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea\n         almost touching;\n The boy ecstatic\u2014with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the\n         atmosphere, dallying,\n The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously\n         bursting;\n The aria's meaning the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,\n The strange tears down the cheeks coursing;\n The colloquy there\u2014the trio\u2014each uttering;\n The undertone\u2014the savage old Mother, incessantly crying,\n To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing\u2014some drowned secret hissing\n To the outsetting bard of love.\n Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)\n Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me?\n For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping,\n Now I have heard you,\n Now in a moment I know what I am for\u2014I awake;\n And already a thousand singers\u2014a thousand songs, clearer, louder, and more\n         sorrowful than yours,\n A thousand warbling echoes, have started to life within me,\n Never to die.\n O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself\u2014projecting me;\n O solitary me, listening\u2014never more shall I cease perpetuating you;\n Never more shall I escape, never more, the reverberations,\n Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,\n Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in\n         the night,\n By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,\n The messenger there aroused\u2014the fire, the sweet hell within,\n The unknown want, the destiny of me.\n O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere;)\n O if I am to have so much, let me have more!\n O a word! O what is my destination? I fear it is henceforth chaos;\u2014\n O how joys, dreads, convolutions, human shapes and all shapes, spring as\n         from graves around me!\n O phantoms! you cover all the land, and all the sea!\n O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or frown upon me;\n O vapour, a look, a word! O well-beloved!\n O you dear women's and men's phantoms!\n A word then, (for I will conquer it,)\n The word final, superior to all,\n Subtle, sent up\u2014what is it?\u2014I listen;\n Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?\n Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?\n Whereto answering, the Sea,\n Delaying not, hurrying not,\n Whispered me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,\n Lisped to me the low and delicious word DEATH;\n And again Death\u2014ever Death, Death, Death,\n Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my aroused child's heart,\n But edging near, as privately for me, rustling at my feet,\n Creeping thence steadily up to my ears, and laving me softly all over,\n Death, Death, Death, Death, Death.\n Which I do not forget,\n But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,\n That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's grey beach,\n With the thousand responsive songs, at random,\n My own songs, awaked from that hour;\n And with them the key, the word up from the waves,\n The word of the sweetest song, and all songs,\n That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,\n The Sea whispered me.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":48,"Keys":"CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY.\n","Values":" Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you\n also face to face.\n Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are\n         to me!\n On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,\n         are more curious to me than you suppose;\n And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me,\n         and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.\n The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;\n The simple, compact, well-joined scheme\u2014myself disintegrated, every one\n         disintegrated, yet part of the scheme;\n The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;\n The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings\u2014on the\n         walk in the street, and the passage over the river;\n The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;\n The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;\n The certainty of others\u2014the life, love, sight, hearing, of others.\n Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;\n Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;\n Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights\n         of Brooklyn to the south and east;\n Others will see the islands large and small;\n Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour\n         high;\n A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see\n         them,\n Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back\n         to the sea of the ebb-tide.\n It avails not, neither time nor place\u2014distance avails not;\n I am with you\u2014you men and women of a generation, or ever so many\n         generations hence;\n I project myself\u2014also I return\u2014I am with you, and know how it is.\n Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;\n Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;\n Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow,\n I was refreshed;\n Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I\n         stood, yet was hurried;\n Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the\n         thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked.\n I too many and many a time crossed the river, the sun half an hour high; I watched the twelfth-month sea-\n gulls\u2014I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, I saw how the\n glistening  yellow  lit  up  parts  of  their  bodies,  and  left  the  rest  in  strong  shadow,  I  saw  the  slow-wheeling\n circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.\n I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,\n Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,\n Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head\n         in the sun-lit water,\n Looked on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward,\n Looked on the vapour as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,\n Looked toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships,\n Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,\n Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,\n The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars.\n The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine\n         pennants,\n The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their\n         pilot-houses,\n The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the\n         wheels,\n The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,\n The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome\n         crests and glistening,\n The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the granite\n         store-houses by the docks,\n On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each\n         side by the barges\u2014the hay-boat, the belated lighter,\n On the neighbouring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high\n         and glaringly into the night,\n Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light,\n         over the tops of houses and down into the clefts of streets.\n These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;\n I project myself a moment to tell you\u2014also I return.\n I loved well those cities;\n I loved well the stately and rapid river;\n The men and women I saw were all near to me;\n Others the same\u2014others who look back on me because I looked forward to\n         them;\n The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.\n What is it, then, between us?\n What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?\n Whatever it is, it avails not\u2014distance avails not, and place avails not.\n I too lived\u2014Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;\n I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters\n         around it;\n I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me;\n In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,\n In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.\n I too had been struck from the float for ever held in solution, I too had\n         received identity by my Body;\n That I was, I knew, was of my body\u2014and what I should be, I knew, I should\n         be of my body.\n It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,\n The dark threw patches down upon me also;\n The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious;\n My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?\n         would not people laugh at me?\n It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;\n I am he who knew what it was to be evil;\n I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,\n Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged;\n Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak;\n Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;\n The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me;\n The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting;\n Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.\n But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!\n I was called by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they\n         saw me approaching or passing,\n Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their\n         flesh against me as I sat;\n Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet\n         never told them a word;\n Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing,\n         sleeping;\n Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,\n The same old r\u00f4le, the r\u00f4le that is what we make it,\u2014as great as we like,\n Or as small as we like, or both great and small.\n Closer yet I approach you:\n What thought you have of me, I had as much of you\u2014\n I laid in my stores in advance;\n I considered long and seriously of you before you were born.\n Who was to know what should come home to me?\n Who knows but I am enjoying this?\n Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see\n         me?\n It is not you alone, nor I alone;\n Not a few races, nor a few generations, nor a few centuries;\n It is that each came or comes or shall come from its due\n emission, without fail, either now or then or henceforth.\n Everything indicates\u2014the smallest does, and the largest does;\n A necessary film envelops all, and envelops the Soul for a proper time.\n Now  I  am  curious  what  sight  can  ever  be  more  stately  and  admirable  to  me  than  my  mast-hemmed\n Manhatta,  My  river  and  sunset,  and  my  scallop-edged  waves  of  flood-tide; The  sea-gulls  oscillating  their\n bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter; Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp\n me  by  the  hand,  and  with  voices  I  love  call  me  promptly  and  loudly  by  my  nighest  name  as  I  approach;\n Curious  what  is  more  subtle  than  this  which  ties  me  to  the  woman  or  man  that  looks  in  my  face, Which\n fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you.\n We understand, then, do we not? What I promised without mentioning it have you not accepted? What\n the study could not teach\u2014what the preaching could not accomplish, is accomplished, is it not? What the\n push of reading could not start, is started by me personally, is it not?\n Flow on river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!\n Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!\n Gorgeous clouds of the sunset, drench with your splendour me, or the men\n         and women generations after me!\n Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!\n Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!-stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!\n Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free Manhattanese!\n Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!\n Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!\n Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or I or any one after us!\n Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public\n         assembly!\n Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest\n         name!\n Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!\n Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes\n         it!\n Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking\n         upon you:\n Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste\n         with the hasting current;\n Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;\n Receive the summer sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all\n         downcast eyes have time to take it from you;\n Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's\n         head, in the sun-lit water;\n Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners,\n         sloops, lighters!\n Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lowered at sunset;\n Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall;\n         cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses;\n Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are;\n You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul;\n About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas;\n Thrive, cities! bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient\n         rivers!\n Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual!\n Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting!\n We descend upon you and all things\u2014we arrest you all;\n We realise the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;\n Through you colour, form, location, sublimity, ideality;\n Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and\n         determinations of ourselves.\n You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you\n         novices!\n We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward;\n Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us;\n We use you, and do not cast you aside\u2014we plant you permanently within us;\n We fathom you not\u2014we love you\u2014there is perfection in you also;\n You furnish your parts toward eternity;\n Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":49,"Keys":"NIGHT AND DEATH.\n","Values":" Night on the prairies.\n The supper is over\u2014the fire on the ground burns low;\n The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapped in their blankets;\n I walk by myself\u2014I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never\n         realised before.\n Now I absorb immortality and peace,\n I admire death, and test propositions.\n How plenteous! How spiritual! How resum\u00e9!\n The same Old Man and Soul\u2014the same old aspirations, and the same content.\n I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not day\n         exhibited,\n I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around\n         me myriads of other globes.\n Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will measure\n         myself by them:\n And now, touched with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as\n         those of the earth,\n Or waiting to arrive, or passed on farther than those of the earth,\n I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,\n Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.\n O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me-as the day cannot,\n I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":50,"Keys":"ELEMENTAL DRIFTS.\n","Values":" Elemental drifts! O I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me.\n As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life,\n As I wended the shores I know,\n As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok,\n Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,\n Where the fierce old Mother endlessly cries for her castaways,\n I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,\n Alone, held by this eternal self of me, out of the pride of which I have\n         uttered my poems,\n Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,\n In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of\n         the globe.\n Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those\n         slender winrows,\n Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,\n Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide;\n Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,\n Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses.\n These you presented to me, you fish-shaped Island,\n As I wended the shores I know,\n As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.\n As I wend to the shores I know not,\n As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked,\n As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,\n As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,\n I too but signify, at the utmost, a little washed-up drift,\n A few sands and dead leaves to gather,\n Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.\n O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth,\n Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,\n Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not\n         once had the least idea who or what I am,\n But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched,\n         untold, altogether unreached,\n Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,\n With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,\n Pointing in silence to all these songs, and then to the sand beneath.\n Now I perceive I have not understood anything\u2014not a single object\u2014and\n         that no man ever can.\n I  perceive  Nature,  here  in  sight  of  the  sea,  is  taking  advantage  of  me,  to  dart  upon  me,  and  sting  me,\n Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.\n You oceans both! I close with you;\n These little shreds shall indeed stand for all.\n You friable shore, with trails of debris!\n You fish-shaped Island! I take what is underfoot;\n What is yours is mine, my father.\n I too, Paumanok,\n I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on\n         your shores;\n I too am but a trail of drift and debris,\n I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped Island.\n I throw myself upon your breast, my father,\n I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,\n I hold you so firm till you answer me something.\n Kiss me, my father,\n Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love,\n Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring\n I envy.\n Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return.)\n Cease not your moaning, you fierce old Mother,\n Endlessly cry for your castaways\u2014but fear not, deny not me,\n Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or\n         gather from you.\n I  mean  tenderly  by  you,  I  gather  for  myself,  and  for  this  phantom,  looking  down  where  we  lead,  and\n following me and mine.\n Me and mine!\n We, loose winrows, little corpses,\n Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,\n (See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!\n See\u2014the prismatic colours, glistening and rolling!)\n Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,\n Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,\n From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell;\n Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil;\n Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown;\n A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at\n         random;\n Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;\n Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets;\n We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,\n You, up there, walking or sitting,\n Whoever you are\u2014we too lie in drifts at your feet.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":51,"Keys":"WONDERS.\n","Values":" Who learns my lesson complete?\n Boss, journeyman, apprentice\u2014churchman and atheist,\n The stupid and the wise thinker\u2014parents and offspring\u2014merchant, clerk,\n         porter, and customer,\n Editor, author, artist; and schoolboy\u2014Draw nigh and commence;\n It is no lesson\u2014it lets down the bars to a good lesson,\n And that to another, and every one to another still.\n The great laws take and effuse without argument;\n I am of the same style, for I am their friend,\n I love them quits and quits\u2014I do not halt and make salaams.\n I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of\n         things;\n They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.\n I cannot say to any person what I hear\u2014I cannot say it to myself\u2014it is\n         very wonderful.\n It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in\n         its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a\n         single second;\n I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten\n         billions of years,\n Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and\n         builds a house.\n I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,\n Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,\n Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.\n Is  it  wonderful  that  I  should  be  immortal?  as  every  one  is  immortal;  I  know  it  is  wonderful\u2014but  my\n eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful; And\n passed from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters, to articulate and walk\u2014All\n this is equally wonderful.\n And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and\n never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful.\n And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful;\n And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is\n         just as wonderful.\n And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally\n         wonderful;\n And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally\n         wonderful.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":52,"Keys":"MIRACLES.\n","Values":" What shall I give? and which are my miracles?\n Realism is mine\u2014my miracles\u2014Take freely, Take without end\u2014I offer them to you wherever your feet\n can carry you or your eyes reach.\n Why! who makes much of a miracle?\n As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,\n Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,\n Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,\n Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,\n Or stand under trees in the woods,\n Or talk by day with any one I love\u2014or sleep in the bed at night with any\n         one I love,\n Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,\n Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,\n Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,\n Or animals feeding in the fields,\n Or birds\u2014or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,\n Or the wonderfulness of the sundown\u2014or of stars shining so quiet and\n         bright,\n Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;\n Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best\u2014mechanics,\n         boatmen, farmers,\n Or among the savans\u2014or to the soir\u00e9e\u2014or to the opera.\n Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,\n Or behold children at their sports,\n Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,\n Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,\n Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;\n These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,\n The whole referring\u2014yet each distinct and in its place.\n To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,\n Every inch of space is a miracle,\n Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,\n Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same;\n Every spear of grass\u2014the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all\n         that concerns them,\n All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.\n To me the sea is a continual miracle;\n The fishes that swim\u2014the rocks\u2014the motion of the waves\u2014the ships, with\n         men in them,\n What stranger miracles are there?\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":53,"Keys":"VISAGES.\n","Values":"Of the visages of things\u2014And of piercing through to the accepted hells\n         beneath.\n Of ugliness\u2014To me there is just as much in it as there is in\n         beauty\u2014And now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me.\n Of detected persons\u2014To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse\n         than undetected persons\u2014and are not in any respect worse than I am\n         myself.\n Of criminals\u2014To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal\u2014and any\n         reputable person is also\u2014and the President is also.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":54,"Keys":"THE DARK SIDE.\n","Values":"I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all\n         oppression and shame;\n I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,\n         remorseful after deeds done;\n I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,\n         gaunt, desperate;\n I see the wife misused by her husband\u2014I see the treacherous seducer of\n         young women;\n I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid\u2014\n         I see these sights on the earth;\n I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny\u2014I see martyrs and\n         prisoners;\n I observe a famine at sea\u2014I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be\n         killed, to preserve the lives of the rest;\n I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon\n         labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;\n All these\u2014all the meanness and agony without end, I, sitting, look out\n         upon;\n See, hear, and am silent.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":55,"Keys":"MUSIC.\n","Values":"I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I passed\n         the church;\n Winds of autumn!\u2014as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your\n         long-stretched sighs, up above, so mournful;\n I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera\u2014I heard the\n         soprano in the midst of the quartette singing.\n \u2014Heart of my love! you too I heard, murmuring low, through one of the\n         wrists around my head;\n Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night\n         under my ear.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":56,"Keys":"WHEREFORE?\n","Values":"O me! O life!\u2014of the questions of these recurring;\n Of the endless trains of the faithless\u2014of cities filled with the foolish;\n Of myself for ever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and\n         who more faithless?)\n Of eyes that vainly crave the light\u2014of the objects mean\u2014of the struggle\n         ever renewed;\n Of the poor results of all\u2014of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around\n         me;\n Of the empty and useless years of the rest\u2014with the rest me intertwined;\n The question, O me! so sad, recurring\u2014What good amid these, O me, O life?\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":57,"Keys":"ANSWER.\n","Values":"That you are here\u2014that life exists, and identity;\n That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":58,"Keys":"QUESTIONABLE.\n","Values":"As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,\n The confession I made I resume\u2014what I said to you and the open air I\n         resume.\n I know I am restless, and make others so;\n I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;\n (Indeed I am myself the real soldier;\n It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped\n         artilleryman;)\n For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;\n I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been\n         had all accepted me;\n I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities,\n         nor ridicule;\n And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me;\n And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me.\n \u2014Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge\n         you, without the least idea what is our destination,\n Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":59,"Keys":"SONG AT SUNSET.\n","Values":" Splendour of ended day, floating and filling me!\n Hour prophetic\u2014hour resuming the past:\n Inflating my throat\u2014you, divine Average!\n You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.\n Open mouth of my soul, uttering gladness,\n Eyes of my soul, seeing perfection,\n Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;\n Corroborating for ever the triumph of things.\n Illustrious every one!\n Illustrious what we name space\u2014sphere of unnumbered spirits;\n Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect;\n Illustrious the attribute of speech\u2014the senses\u2014the body;\n Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new\n         moon in the western sky!\n Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.\n Good in all,\n In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,\n In the annual return of the seasons,\n In the hilarity of youth,\n In the strength and flush of manhood,\n In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,\n In the superb vistas of Death.\n Wonderful to depart;\n Wonderful to be here!\n The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood,\n To breathe the air, how delicious!\n To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!\n To prepare for sleep, for bed\u2014to look on my rose-coloured flesh,\n To be conscious of my body, so happy, so large,\n To be this incredible God I am,\n To have gone forth among other Gods\u2014those men and women I love.\n Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!\n How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!\n How the clouds pass silently overhead!\n How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and\n         on!\n How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)\n How the trees rise and stand up\u2014with strong trunks\u2014with branches and\n         leaves!\n Surely there is something more in each of the trees\u2014some living soul.\n O amazement of things! even the least particle!\n O spirituality of things!\n O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents\u2014now reaching me and\n         America!\n I take your strong chords\u2014I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them\n         forward.\n I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting,\n I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of\n         the earth,\n I too have felt the resistless call of myself.\n As I sailed down the Mississippi,\n As I wandered over the prairies,\n As I have lived\u2014As I have looked through my windows, my eyes,\n As I went forth in the morning\u2014As I beheld the light breaking in the east;\n As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the\n         Western Sea;\n As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I have roamed;\n Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.\n I sing the Equalities;\n I sing the endless finales of things;\n I say Nature continues\u2014Glory continues;\n I praise with electric voice:\n For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;\n And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.\n O setting sun! though the time has come,\n I still warble under you unmitigated adoration.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":60,"Keys":"LONGINGS FOR HOME.\n","Values":"O Magnet South! O glistening, perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love!\n good and evil! O all dear to me! O dear to me my birth-things\u2014all moving things, and the trees where I was\n born,the grains, plants, rivers; Dear to me my own slow, sluggish rivers, where they flow distant over\n flats of silvery sands or through swamps; Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee,\n the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine\u2014 O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my\n soul  to  haunt  their  banks  again. Again  in  Florida  I  float  on  transparent  lakes\u2014I  float  on  Okeechobee\u2014I\n cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings or dense forests. I see the parrots in the woods, I see\n the papaw-tree, and the blossoming titi. Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up\n the Carolinas; I see where the live-oak is growing\u2014I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the\n lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto. I pass rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound\n through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The\n cactus,  guarded  with  thorns\u2014the  laurel-tree,  with  large  white  flowers;  The  range  afar\u2014the  richness  and\n barrenness\u2014the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom\u2014the\n awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has\n his  concealed  hut;  O  the  strange  fascination  of  these  half-known,  half-impassable  swamps,  infested  by\n reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the\n whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon\u2014singing through\n the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Tennessee corn-field\u2014\n the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn\u2014slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels\u2014with beautiful ears, each\n well-sheathed in its husk; An Arkansas prairie\u2014a sleeping lake, or still bayou. O my heart! O tender and\n fierce  pangs\u2014I  can  stand  them  not\u2014I  will  depart!  O  to  be  a  Virginian,  where  I  grew  up!  O  to  be  a\n Carolinian! O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":61,"Keys":"APPEARANCES.\n","Values":"Of the terrible doubt of appearances,\n Of the uncertainty after all\u2014that we may be deluded,\n That maybe reliance and hope are but speculations after all,\n That maybe identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,\n Maybe the things I perceive\u2014the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and\n         flowing waters,\n The skies of day and night\u2014colours, densities, forms\u2014Maybe these are (as\n         doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has\n         yet to be known;\n (How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me!\n How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them!)\n Maybe seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as\n         from my present point of view\u2014And might prove (as of course they\n         would) naught of what they appear, or naught anyhow, from entirely\n         changed points of view;\n \u2014To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answered by my lovers,\n         my dear friends.\n When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the\n         hand,\n When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold\n         not, surround us and pervade us,\n Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom\u2014I am silent\u2014I require\n         nothing further,\n I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity beyond the\n         grave;\n But I walk or sit indifferent\u2014I am satisfied,\n He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.\n THE FRIEND.\n Recorders ages hence! Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior\u2014I will tell you what\n to say of me; Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend, the lover's\n portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless\n ocean of love within him\u2014and freely poured it forth, Who often walked lonesome walks, thinking of his\n dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive, away from one he loved, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night,\n Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose\n happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand,\n they twain, apart from other men, Who oft, as he sauntered the streets, curved with his arm the shoulder of\n his friend\u2014while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":62,"Keys":"MEETING AGAIN.\n","Values":"When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been received with\n         plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that\n         followed;\n And else, when I caroused, or when my plans were accomplished, still I was\n         not happy.\n But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refreshed,\n         singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,\n When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning\n         light,\n When I wandered alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with\n         the cool waters, and saw the sunrise,\n And when I thought how my dear friend, my lover, was on his way coming, O\n         then I was happy;\n O then each breath tasted sweeter\u2014and all that day my food nourished me\n         more\u2014and the beautiful day passed well,\n And the next came with equal joy\u2014and with the next, at evening, came my\n         friend;\n And that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly\n         continually up the shores,\n I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me,\n         whispering, to congratulate me;\n For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool\n         night,\n In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,\n And his arm lay lightly around my breast\u2014and that night I was happy.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":63,"Keys":"A DREAM.\n","Values":"Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was dead;\n And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I love\u2014but he was not in\n         that place;\n And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial-places, to find him;\n And I found that every place was a burial-place;\n The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;)\n The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston,\n Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living,\n And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living.\n \u2014And what I dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age,\n And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed;\n And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them;\n And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even\n         in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied;\n And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered\n         to powder, and poured in the sea, I shall be satisfied;\n Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":64,"Keys":"PARTING FRIENDS.\n","Values":"What think you I take my pen in hand to record?\n The battle-ship, perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-\n         day under full sail?\n The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of the night that envelops\n         me?\n Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?\u2014No;\n But I record of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier, in the midst of\n         the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends;\n The one to remain hung on the other's neck, and passionately kissed him,\n While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":65,"Keys":"TO A STRANGER.\n","Values":"Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you;\n You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me, as of a\n         dream).\n I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you.\n All is recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste,\n         matured;\n You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me;\n I ate with you, and slept with you\u2014your body has become not yours only,\n         nor left my body mine only;\n You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass\u2014you take of\n         my beard, breast, hands in return;\n I am not to speak to you\u2014I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at\n         night alone;\n I am to wait\u2014I do not doubt I am to meet you again;\n I am to see to it that I do not lose you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":66,"Keys":"OTHER LANDS.\n","Values":"This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,\n It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;\n It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Prussia, Italy, France,\n         Spain\u2014or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India\u2014talking\n         other dialects;\n And it seems to me, if I could know those men, I should become attached to\n         them, as I do to men in my own lands.\n O I know we should be brethren and lovers;\n I know I should be happy with them.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":67,"Keys":"ENVY.\n","Values":"When  I  peruse  the  conquered  fame  of  heroes,  and  the  victories  of  mighty  generals,  I  do  not  envy  the\n generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house.\n But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them; How through life, through dangers,\n odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how\n affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive\u2014I hastily put down the book, and walk away, filled\n with the bitterest envy.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":68,"Keys":"THE CITY OF FRIENDS.\n","Values":"I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of\n         the rest of the earth;\n I dreamed that it was the new City of Friends;\n Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love\u2014it led the rest;\n It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,\n And in all their looks and words.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":69,"Keys":"OUT OF THE CROWD.\n","Values":" Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,\n Whispering, I love you; before long I die:\n I have travelled a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you:\n For I could not die till I once looked on you,\n For I feared I might afterward lose you.\n Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;\n Return in peace to the ocean, my love;\n I too am part of that ocean, my love\u2014we are not so much separated;\n Behold the great rondure\u2014the cohesion of all, how perfect!\n But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,\n As for an hour carrying us diverse\u2014yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;\n Be not impatient\u2014a little space\u2014know you, I salute the air, the ocean,\n         and the land,\n Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":70,"Keys":"AMONG THE MULTITUDE.\n","Values":"Among the men and women, the multitude,\n I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,\n Acknowledging none else\u2014not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any\n         nearer than I am;\n Some are baffled\u2014But that one is not\u2014that one knows me.\n Ah, lover and perfect equal!\n I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections;\n And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":71,"Keys":"LEAVES OF GRASS.\n","Values":null},{"Unnamed: 0":72,"Keys":"PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN.\n","Values":" When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,\n And the great starearly drooped in the western sky in the night,\n I mourned,\u2026and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.\n O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;\n Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,\n And thought of him I love.\n O powerful, western, fallen star!\n O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!\n O great star disappeared! O the black murk that hides the star!\n O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!\n O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!\n In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed palings,\n Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich\n         green,\n With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate, with the perfume strong I\n         love,\n With every leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the dooryard,\n With delicate-coloured blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,\n A sprig, with its flower, I break.\n In the swamp, in secluded recesses,\n A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.\n Solitary, the thrush,\n The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,\n Sings by himself a song:\n Song of the bleeding throat!\n Death's outlet song of life\u2014for well, dear brother, I know,\n If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou wouldst surely die.\n Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,\n Amid lanes, and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the\n         ground, spotting the greydebris;\n Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes\u2014passing the endless\n         grass;\n Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the\n         dark-brown fields uprising;\n Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards;\n Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,\n Night and day journeys a coffin.\n Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,\n Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,\n With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black,\n With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women standing,\n With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,\n With the countless torches lit\u2014with the silent sea of faces,\n         and the unbared heads,\n With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,\n With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and\n         solemn;\n With all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin,\n The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs\u2014Where amid these you\n         journey,\n With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;\n Here! coffin that slowly passes,\n I give you my sprig of lilac.\n Nor for you, for one, alone;\n Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring:\n For fresh as the morning\u2014thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and\n         sacred Death.\n All over bouquets of roses,\n O Death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;\n But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,\n Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes!\n With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,\n For you and the coffins all of you, O Death.\n O western orb, sailing the heaven!\n Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walked,\n As we walked up and down in the dark blue so mystic,\n As we walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,\n As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night,\n As you drooped from the sky low down, as if to my side, while the other\n         stars all looked on;\n As we wandered together the solemn night, for something, I know not what,\n         kept me from sleep;\n As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west, ere you went, how\n         full you were of woe;\n As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cool transparent\n         night,\n As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the\n         night,\n As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb,\n Concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone.\n Sing on, there in the swamp!\n O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes\u2014I hear your call;\n I hear\u2014I come presently\u2014I understand you;\n But a moment I linger\u2014for the lustrous star has detained me;\n The star, my comrade departing, holds and detains me.\n O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?\n And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?\n And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?\n Sea-winds, blown from east and west,\n Blown from the Eastern Sea, and blown from the Western Sea, till there on\n         the prairies meeting:\n These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,\n I perfume the grave of him I love.\n O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?\n And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,\n To adorn the burial-house of him I love?\n Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,\n With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke lucid and bright,\n With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent sinking sun,\n         burning, expanding the air;\n With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the\n         trees prolific;\n In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river,\n         with a wind-dapple here and there;\n With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and\n         shadows;\n And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,\n And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward\n         returning.\n Lo! body and soul! this land!\n Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and\n         the ships;\n The varied and ample land\u2014the South and the North in the\n light\u2014Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri,\n And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.\n Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty;\n The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes;\n The gentle, soft-born, measureless light;\n The miracle, spreading, bathing all\u2014the fulfilled noon;\n The coming eve, delicious\u2014the welcome night, and the stars,\n Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.\n Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird!\n Sing from the swamps, the recesses\u2014pour your chant from the bushes;\n Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.\n Sing on, dearest brother\u2014warble your reedy song,\n Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.\n O liquid, and free, and tender!\n O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer!\n You only I hear,\u2026 yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;)\n Yet the lilac, with mastering odour, holds me.\n Now while I sat in the day, and looked forth,\n In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the\n         farmer preparing his crops,\n In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests,\n In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and the storms;\n Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of\n         children and women,\n The many-moving sea-tides,\u2014and I saw the ships how they sailed,\n And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with\n         labour,\n And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals\n and minutiae of daily usages;\n And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities\n         pent\u2014lo! then and there,\n Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,\n Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail;\n And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of Death.\n And the Thought of Death close-walking the other side of me,\n And I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of\n         companions,\n I fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not,\n Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,\n To the solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still.\n And the singer so shy to the rest received me;\n The grey-brown bird I know received us Comrades three;\n And he sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse for him I love.\n From deep secluded recesses,\n From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines so still,\n Came the singing of the bird.\n And the charm of the singing rapt me,\n As I held, as if by their hands, my Comrades in the night;\n And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.\n Come, lovely and soothing Death,\n Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,\n In the day, in the night, to all, to each,\n Sooner or later, delicate Death.\n Praised be the fathomless universe,\n For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;\n And for love, sweet love\u2014But praise! O praise and praise,\n For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.\n Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,\n Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?\n Then I chant it for thee\u2014I glorify thee above all;\n I bring thee a song that, when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.\n Approach, encompassing Death-strong deliveress!\n When it is so\u2014when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,\n Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,\n Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.\n From me to thee glad serenades,\n Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee\u2014adornments and feastings for\n         thee;\n And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky, are fitting,\n And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.\n The night, in silence, under many a star;\n The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;\n And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,\n And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.\n Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!\n Over the rising and sinking waves\u2014over the myriad fields, and the prairies\n         wide;\n Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways,\n I float this carol with joy, with joy, to thee, O Death!\n To the tally of my soul\n Loud and strong kept up the grey-brown bird,\n With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night.\n Loud in the pines and cedars dim,\n Clear in the freshness moist, and the swamp-perfume,\n And I with my Comrades there in the night.\n While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,\n As to long panoramas of visions.\n I saw the vision of armies;\n And I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle-flags;\n Borne through the smoke of the battles, and pierced with missiles, I saw\n         them,\n And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody;\n And at last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs, (and all in\n         silence,)\n And the staffs all splintered and broken.\n I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,\n And the white skeletons of young men\u2014I saw them;\n I saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers.\n But I saw they were not as was thought;\n They themselves were fully at rest\u2014they suffered not;\n The living remained and suffered\u2014the mother suffered,\n And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered,\n And the armies that remained suffered.\n Passing the visions, passing the night;\n Passing, unloosing the hold of my Comrades' hands;\n Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the tallying song of my soul;\n Victorious song, Death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering song;\n As low and wailing, yet clear, the notes, rising and falling, flooding the\n         night,\n Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting\n         with joy.\n Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven,\n As that powerful psalm in the night, I heard from recesses.\n Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves?\n Must I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring?\n Must I pass from my song for thee\u2014\n From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,\n O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night?\n Yet each I keep, and all;\n The song, the wondrous chant of the grey-brown bird,\n And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,\n With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe;\n With the lilac tali, and its blossoms of mastering odour;\n Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep\u2014for the\n         dead I loved so well;\n For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands\u2014and this for his\n         dear sake;\n Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,\n With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird,\n There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":73,"Keys":"O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! (FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN.)\n","Values":" O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!\n The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won.\n The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,\n While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.\n             But, O heart! heart! heart!\n             Leave you not the little spot\n             Where on the deck my Captain lies,\n                 Fallen cold and dead.\n O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells!\n Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:\n For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths; for you the shores a-crowding:\n For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.\n             O Captain! dear father!\n             This arm I push beneath you.\n             It is some dream that on the deck\n                 You've fallen cold and dead!\n My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still:\n My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.\n But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done:\n From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!\n             Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!\n             But I, with silent tread,\n             Walk the spot my Captain lies,\n                 Fallen cold and dead.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":74,"Keys":"PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!\n","Values":"   Come, my tan-faced children,\n Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;\n Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   For we cannot tarry here,\n We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,\n We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend.\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   O you youths, Western youths,\n So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,\n Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Have the elder races halted?\n Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?\n We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   All the past we leave behind;\n We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world;\n Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   We detachments steady throwing,\n Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,\n Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   We primeval forests felling,\n We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;\n We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Colorado men are we,\n From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,\n From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   From Nebraska, from Arkansas,\n Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood\n interveined;\n All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   O resistless, restless race!\n O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!\n O I mourn and yet exult\u2014I am rapt with love for all,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers;\n   Raise the mighty mother mistress,\n Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your\n heads all,)\n Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weaponed mistress,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   See, my children, resolute children,\n By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,\n Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   On and on, the compact ranks,\n With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled,\n Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   O to die advancing on!\n Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?\n Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is filled,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   All the pulses of the world,\n Falling in, they beat for us, with the Western movement beat;\n Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Life's involved and varied pageants,\n All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,\n All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,\n       Pioneers, O pioneers!\n   All the hapless silent lovers,\n All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,\n All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   I too with my soul and body,\n We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,\n Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Lo! the darting, bowling orb!\n Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets;\n All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   These are of us, they are with us,\n All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait\n behind,\n We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   O you daughters of the West!\n O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!\n Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Minstrels latent on the prairies!\n (Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep\u2014you have done your work;)\n Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Not for delectations sweet;\n Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;\n Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Do the feasters gluttonous feast?\n Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors?\n Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Has the night descended?\n Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our\n way?\n Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n   Till with sound of trumpet,\n Far, far off the daybreak call\u2014hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;\n Swift! to the head of the army!\u2014swift! spring to your places,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":75,"Keys":"TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS.\n","Values":" Earth, round, rolling, compact\u2014suns, moons, animals\u2014all these are words\n         to be said;\n Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances\u2014beings, premonitions, lispings of\n         the future,\n Behold! these are vast words to be said.\n Were you thinking that those were the words\u2014those upright lines? those\n         curves, angles, dots?\n No, those are not the words\u2014the substantial words are in the ground and\n         sea,\n They are in the air\u2014they are in you.\n Were you thinking that those were the words\u2014those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths? No;\n the real words are more delicious than they.\n Human bodies are words, myriads of words;\n In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,\n         natural, gay;\n Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.\n Air, soil, water, fire\u2014these are words; I myself am a word with them\u2014my qualities interpenetrate with\n theirs\u2014my name is nothing to them; Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air,\n soil, water, fire, know of my name?\n A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings,\n         meanings;\n The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings\n         and meanings also.\n The  workmanship  of  souls  is  by  the  inaudible  words  of  the  earth;  The  great  masters  know  the  earth's\n words, and use them more than the audible words.\n Amelioration is one of the earth's words;\n The earth neither lags nor hastens;\n It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump;\n It is not half beautiful only\u2014defects and excrescences show just as much\n         as perfections show.\n The earth does not withhold\u2014it is generous enough;\n The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either;\n They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print;\n They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,\n Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth. I utter and utter:\n I speak not; yet, if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you?\n To bear\u2014to better; lacking these, of what avail am I?\n Accouche! Accouchez! Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? Will you squat and stifle there?\n The earth does not argue,\n Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,\n Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,\n Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,\n Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out;\n Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.\n The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself\u2014possesses still underneath; Underneath the\n ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the\n dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these, possessing the words that never\n fail.\n To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail;\n The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does\n         not fail;\n Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.\n Of the interminable sisters,\n Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,\n Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,\n The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.\n With her ample back towards every beholder,\n With the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age,\n Sits she whom I too love like the rest\u2014sits undisturbed,\n Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes\n         glance back from it,\n Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,\n Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.\n Seen at hand, or seen at a distance,\n Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,\n Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion,\n Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of\n         those who are with them,\n From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance,\n From the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things,\n From the landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky,\n From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,\n Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same\n         companions.\n Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and\n         sixty-five resistlessly round the sun;\n Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-\n         five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.\n Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,\n Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, for ever withstanding, passing, carrying,\n The Soul's realisation and determination still inheriting;\n The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,\n No baulk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,\n Swift, glad, content, unbereaved, nothing losing,\n Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,\n The divine ship sails the divine sea.\n Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you;\n The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.\n Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,\n You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky;\n For none more than you are the present and the past,\n For none more than you is immortality.\n Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such as the word of the\n         past and present, and the word of immortality;\n No one can acquire for another\u2014not one!\n Not one can grow for another\u2014not one!\n The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him;\n The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him;\n The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him;\n The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him;\n The love is to the lover, and conies back most to him;\n The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him\u2014it cannot fail;\n The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not\n         to the audience;\n And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the\n         indication of his own.\n I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be\n         complete!\n I swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains\n         broken and jagged!\n I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the\n         earth!\n I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the\n         theory of the earth!\n No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account, unless\n         it compare with the amplitude of the earth,\n Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the\n         earth.\n I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds\n         love!\n It is that which contains itself\u2014which never invites, and never refuses.\n I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!\n I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings\n         of the earth;\n Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth;\n Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.\n I swear I see what is better than to tell the best;\n It is always to leave the best untold.\n When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot,\n My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,\n My breath will not be obedient to its organs,\n I become a dumb man.\n The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow\u2014all or any is best;\n It is not what you anticipated\u2014it is cheaper, easier, nearer;\n Things are not dismissed from the places they held before;\n The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before;\n Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before;\n But the Soul is also real,\u2014it too is positive and direct;\n No reasoning, no proof has established it,\n Undeniable growth has established it.\n This is a poem for the sayers of words\u2014these are hints of meanings,\n These are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls;\n If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then?\n If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?\n I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the\n         best!\n I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.\n Say on, sayers!\n Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!\n Work on\u2014it is materials you bring, not breaths;\n Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost!\n It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use;\n When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear.\n I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them\n         and lead them;\n I swear to you they will understand you and justify you;\n I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and\n         encloses all, and is faithful to all;\n I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you\u2014they shall perceive\n         that you are not an iota less than they;\n I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":76,"Keys":"VOICES.\n","Values":" Now I make a leaf of Voices\u2014for I have found nothing mightier than they\n         are,\n And I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place.\n O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?\n Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,\n As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around\n         the globe.\n All waits for the right voices;\n Where is the practised and perfect organ? Where is the developed Soul?\n For I see every word uttered thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,\n         impossible on less terms.\n I see brains and lips closed\u2014tympans and temples unstruck,\n Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,\n Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering,\n         for ever ready, in all words.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":77,"Keys":"WHOSOEVER.\n","Values":"Whoever  you  are,  I  fear  you  are  walking  the  walks  of  dreams,  I  fear  those  supposed  realities  are  to  melt\n from  under  your  feet  and  hands;  Even  now,  your  features,  joys,  speech,  house,  trade,  manners,  troubles,\n follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand\n forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print,\n buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.\n Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;\n I whisper with my lips close to your ear,\n I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.\n Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb;\n I should have made my way straight to you long ago;\n I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but\n         you.\n I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;\n None have understood you, but I understand you;\n None have done justice to you\u2014you have not done justice to yourself;\n None but have found you imperfect\u2014I only find no imperfection in you;\n None but would subordinate you\u2014I only am he who will never consent to\n         subordinate you;\n I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what\n         waits intrinsically in yourself.\n Painters  have  painted  their  swarming  groups,  and  the  centre  figure  of  all,  From  the  head  of  the  centre\n figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its\n nimbus  of  gold-  coloured  light;  From  my  hand,  from  the  brain  of  every  man  and  woman,  it  streams,\n effulgently flowing for ever.\n O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!\n You have not known what you are\u2014you have slumbered upon yourself all your\n         life;\n Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time;\n What you have done returns already in mockeries;\n Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what\n         is their return?\n The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none\n else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these\n conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady\n eye,  the  impure  complexion,  if  these  baulk  others,  they  do  not  baulk  me. The  pert  apparel,  the  deformed\n attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside.\n There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;\n There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;\n No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;\n No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.\n As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to\n         you;\n I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the\n         songs of the glory of you.\n Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!\n These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you;\n These immense meadows\u2014these interminable rivers\u2014you are immense and\n         interminable as they;\n These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent\n         dissolution\u2014you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,\n Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion,\n         dissolution.\n The  hopples  fall  from  your  ankles\u2014you  find  an  unfailing  sufficiency;  Old  or  young,  male  or  female,\n rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulgates itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the\n means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are\n picks its way.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":78,"Keys":"BEGINNERS.\n","Values":"How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals;\n How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;\n How they inure to themselves as much as to any\u2014What a paradox appears\n         their age;\n How people respond to them, yet know them not;\n How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;\n How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,\n And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great\n         purchase.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":79,"Keys":"TO A PUPIL.\n","Values":" Is reform needed? Is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you\n need to accomplish it.\n You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion,\n         clean and sweet?\n Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul that, when\n         you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters\n         with you, and every one is impressed with your personality?\n O the magnet! the flesh over and over!\n Go, dear friend! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure\n         yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,\n         elevatedness;\n Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":80,"Keys":"LINKS.\n","Values":" Think of the Soul;\n I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to\n         live in other spheres;\n I do not know how, but I know it is so.\n Think of loving and being loved; I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such\n things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.\n Think of the past; I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and your times.\n The  race  is  never  separated\u2014nor  man  nor  woman  escapes; All  is  inextricable\u2014things,  spirits,  nature,\n nations, you too\u2014from precedents you come.\n Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them);\n Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;\n Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons\u2014brother of slaves, felons,\n         idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.\n Think of the time when you was not yet born;\n Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;\n Think of the time when your own body will be dying.\n Think of spiritual results: Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass\n into spiritual results.\n Think of manhood, and you to be a man;\n Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?\n Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;\n         The creation is womanhood;\n Have I not said that womanhood involves all?\n Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best\n         womanhood?\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":81,"Keys":"THE WATERS.\n","Values":"The  world  below  the  brine.  Forests  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea\u2014the  branches  and  leaves,  Sea-lettuce,  vast\n lichens, strange flowers and seeds\u2014the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale\n grey and green, purple, white, and gold\u2014the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among\n the  rocks\u2014coral,  gluten,  grass,  rushes\u2014and  the  aliment  of  the  swimmers,  Sluggish  existences  grazing\n there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom: The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and\n spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and\n the  sting-ray.  Passions  there,  wars,  pursuits,  tribes\u2014sight  in  those  ocean-depths\u2014  breathing  that  thick\n breathing air, as so many do. The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings\n like us, who walk this sphere: The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":82,"Keys":"TO THE STATES.\n","Values":"TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD. Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?\n What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!\n Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?\n What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your\n         Arctic freezings!)\n Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the\n         President?\n Then I will sleep a while yet\u2014for I see that these States sleep, for\n         reasons.\n With gathering murk\u2014with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly\n         awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will\n         surely awake.\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":83,"Keys":"TEARS.\n","Values":"Tears! tears! tears!\n     In the night, in solitude, tears;\n On the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand;\n Tears\u2014not a star shining\u2014all dark and desolate;\n Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head:\n \u2014O who is that ghost?\u2014that form in the dark, with tears?\n What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?\n Streaming tears\u2014sobbing tears\u2014throes, choked with wild cries;\n O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;\n O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!\n O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated\n         pace;\n But away, at night, as you fly, none looking\u2014O then the unloosened ocean\n Of tears! tears! tears!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":84,"Keys":"A SHIP.\n","Values":" Aboard, at the ship's helm,\n A young steersman, steering with care.\n A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,\n An ocean-bell\u2014O a warning bell, rocked by the waves.\n O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,\n Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.\n For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition,\n The bows turn,\u2014the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her grey\n         sails;\n The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away\n         gaily and safe.\n But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!\n O ship of the body\u2014ship of the soul\u2014voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":85,"Keys":"GREATNESS.\n","Values":" Great are the myths\u2014I too delight in them;\n Great are Adam and Eve\u2014I too look back and accept them;\n Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,\n         inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests.\n Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;\n Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,\n I weather it out with you, or sink with you.\n Great is Youth\u2014equally great is Old Age\u2014great are the Day and Night;\n Great is Wealth\u2014great is Poverty\u2014great is Expression\u2014great is Silence.\n Youth, large, lusty, loving\u2014Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come\n after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?\n Day, full-blown and splendid\u2014Day of the immense sun, action, ambition,\n         laughter,\n The Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring\n         darkness.\n Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality;\n But then the soul's wealth, which is candour, knowledge, pride, enfolding\n         love;\n Who goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than wealth?\n Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that Silence\n         is also expressive;\n That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the coldest,\n         may be without words.\n Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is: Do you imagine it has stopped at this? the increase\n abandoned?  Understand  then  that  it  goes  as  far  onward  from  this  as  this  is  from  the  times  when  it  lay  in\n covering waters and gases, before man had appeared.\n Great is the quality of Truth in man;\n The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes;\n It is inevitably in the man\u2014he and it are in love, and never leave each\n         other.\n The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight; If there be any Soul, there is truth\u2014if there be man\n or woman, there is truth\u2014if there be physical or moral, there is truth; If there be equilibrium or volition,\n there is truth\u2014if there be things at all upon the earth, there is truth.\n O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press my way\n         toward you;\n Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea, after you.\n Great  is  Language\u2014it  is  the  mightiest  of  the  sciences,  It  is  the  fulness,  colour,  form,  diversity  of  the\n earth, and of men and women, and of all qualities and processes; It is greater than wealth, it is greater than\n buildings, ships, religions, paintings, music.\n Great is the English speech\u2014what speech is so great as the English?\n Great is the English brood\u2014what brood has so vast a destiny as the\n         English?\n It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule;\n The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice,\n         equality in the Soul rule.\n Great is Law\u2014great are the old few landmarks of the law,\n They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturbed.\n Great is Justice!\n Justice is not settled by legislators and laws\u2014it is in the Soul;\n It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction\n         of gravity, can;\n It is immutable\u2014it does not depend on majorities\u2014majorities or what not\n         come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.\n For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges\u2014it is in\n         their souls;\n It is well assorted\u2014they have not studied for nothing\u2014the great includes\n         the less;\n They rule on the highest grounds\u2014they oversee all eras, states,\n         administrations.\n The perfect judge fears nothing\u2014he could go front to front before God; Before the perfect judge all shall\n stand back\u2014life and death shall stand back\u2014heaven and hell shall stand back.\n Great  is  Life,  real  and  mystical,  wherever  and  whoever;  Great  is  Death\u2014sure  as  Life  holds  all  parts\n together, Death holds all parts together.\n Has Life much purport?\u2014Ah! Death has the greatest purport.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":86,"Keys":"THE POET.\n","Values":" Now list to my morning's romanza;\n To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me.\n A young man came to me bearing a message from his brother;\n How should the young man know the whether and when of his brother?\n Tell him to send me the signs.\n And I stood before the young man face to face, and took his right hand in\n         my left hand, and his left hand in my right hand,\n And I answered for his brother, and for men, and I answered for THE POET,\n         and sent these signs.\n Him all wait for\u2014him all yield up to\u2014his word is decisive and final,\n Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light,\n Him they immerse, and he immerses them.\n Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people,\n         animals,\n The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean (so tell I my\n         morning's romanza),\n All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy,\n The best farms\u2014others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps,\n The noblest and costliest cities\u2014others grading and building, and he\n         domiciles there,\n Nothing for any one but what is for him\u2014near and far are for him,\u2014the\n         ships in the offing,\n The perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him, if they are for\n         anybody.\n He  puts  things  in  their  attitudes;  He  puts  to-day  out  of  himself,  with  plasticity  and  love;  He  places  his\n own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the\n rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.\n He is the answerer; What can be answered he answers\u2014and what cannot be answered, he shows how it\n cannot be answered.\n A man is a summons and challenge; (It is vain to skulk\u2014Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you\n hear the ironical echoes?)\n Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up\n         and down, seeking to give satisfaction;\n He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down\n         also.\n Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and\n         gently and safely, by day or by night;\n He has the pass-key of hearts\u2014to him the response of the prying of hands\n         on the knobs.\n His welcome is universal\u2014the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is; The person he\n favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.\n Every existence has its idiom\u2014everything has an idiom and tongue; He resolves all tongues into his own,\n and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also; One part does not\n counteract another part\u2014he is the joiner\u2014he sees how they join.\n He says indifferently and alike, \"How are you, friend?\" to the President\n         at his levee,\n And he says, \"Good-day, my brother!\" to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-\n         field,\n And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.\n He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol, He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to\n another, \"Here is our equal, appearing and new.\"\n Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,\n And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has\n         followed the sea,\n And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,\n And the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love them;\n No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has\n         followed it,\n No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters\n         there.\n The English believe he comes of their English stock, A Jew to the Jew he seems\u2014a Russ to the Russ\u2014\n usual and near, removed from none.\n Whoever he looks at in the travellers' coffee-house claims him;\n The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard\n         is sure, and the island Cuban is sure;\n The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or\n St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him.\n The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood;\n The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves\n         in the ways of him\u2014he strangely transmutes them,\n They are not vile any more\u2014they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":87,"Keys":"BURIAL.\n","Values":" To think of it!\n To think of time\u2014of all that retrospection!\n To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!\n Have you guessed you yourself would not continue?\n Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?\n Have you feared the future would be nothing to you?\n Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?\n If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.\n To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible,\n         real, alive! that everything was alive!\n To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!\n To think that we are now here, and bear our part!\n Not a day passes\u2014not a minute or second, without an accouchement!\n Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse!\n The dull nights go over, and the dull days also,\n The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,\n The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look\n         for an answer,\n The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are\n         sent for;\n Medicines stand unused on the shelf\u2014(the camphor-smell has long pervaded\n         the rooms,)\n The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,\n The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,\n The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,\n The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it,\n It is palpable as the living are palpable.\n The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, But without eyesight lingers a different living, and\n looks curiously on the corpse.\n To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and the fruits\n         ripen, and act upon others as upon us now\u2014yet not act upon us!\n To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great\n         interest in them\u2014and we taking\u2014no interest in them!\n To think how eager we are in building our houses!\n To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!\n I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or\n         eighty years at most,\n I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.\n Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth\u2014they never cease\u2014\n         they are the burial lines;\n He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely\n         be buried.\n Gold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf\u2014posh and ice in the river, half- frozen mud in the streets, a grey\n discouraged  sky  overhead,  the  short  last  daylight  of  Twelfth-month, A  hearse  and  stages\u2014other  vehicles\n give place\u2014the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.\n Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is\n         passed, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the\n         hearse uncloses,\n The coffin is passed out, lowered, and settled, the whip is laid on the\n         coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in,\n The mound above is flattened with the spades\u2014silence,\n A minute, no one moves or speaks\u2014it is done,\n He is decently put away\u2014is there anything more?\n He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty,\n sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty,\n had  known  what  it  was  to  be  flush,  grew  low-spirited  toward  the  last,  sickened,  was  helped  by  a\n contribution, died, aged forty- one years\u2014and that was his funeral.\n Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather\n         clothes, whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler,\n         somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man\n         before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock,\n         mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night;\n To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers\u2014and he there\n         takes no interest in them!\n The markets, the government, the working-man's wages\u2014to think what account\n         they are through our nights and days!\n To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them\u2014\n         yet we make little or no account!\n The vulgar and the refined\u2014what you call sin, and what you call goodness\u2014\n         to think how wide a difference!\n To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond\n         the difference.\n To think how much pleasure there is!\n Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?\n Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a\n         nomination and election? or with your wife and family?\n Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful\n         maternal cares?\n These also flow onward to others\u2014you and I fly onward,\n But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.\n Your  farm,  profits,  crops,\u2014to  think  how  engrossed  you  are!  To  think  there  will  still  be  farms,  profits,\n crops\u2014yet for you, of what avail?\n What will be will be well\u2014for what is is well;\n To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.\n The sky continues beautiful, The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of\n women with men, nor the pleasure from poems; The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the\n building  of  houses\u2014these  are  not  phantasms\u2014they  have  weight,  form,  location;  Farms,  profits,  crops,\n markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms; The difference between sin and goodness is no\n delusion, The earth is not an echo\u2014man and his life, and all the things of his life, are well-considered.\n You are not thrown to the winds\u2014you gather certainly and safely around\n         yourself;\n Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, for ever and ever!\n It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father\u2014it\n         is to identify you;\n It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should\n         be decided;\n Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,\n You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.\n The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the\n         pattern is systematic.\n The preparations have every one been justified, The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments\u2014\n the baton has given the signal.\n The guest that was coming\u2014he waited long, for reasons\u2014he is now housed; He is one of those who are\n beautiful and happy\u2014he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.\n The law of the past cannot be eluded,\n The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,\n The law of the living cannot be eluded\u2014it is eternal;\n The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,\n The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,\n The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons\u2014not one iota thereof can be\n         eluded.\n Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,\n Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the\n         Atlantic side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all\n         through the Mississippi country, and all over the earth.\n The great masters and kosmos are well as they go\u2014the heroes and good-doers\n         are well,\n The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and\n         distinguished, may be well,\n But there is more account than that\u2014there is strict account of all.\n The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,\n The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,\n The common people of Europe are not nothing\u2014the American aborigines are\n         not nothing,\n The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing\u2014the murderer or\n         mean person is not nothing,\n The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,\n The lowest prostitute is not nothing\u2014the mocker of religion is not nothing\n         as he goes.\n I shall go with the rest\u2014we have satisfaction,\n I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us\n         changed,\n I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and\n         past law,\n And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past\n         law,\n For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.\n And  I  have  dreamed  that  the  satisfaction  is  not  so  much  changed,  and  that  there  is  no  life  without\n satisfaction; What is the earth? what are Body and Soul without satisfaction?\n I shall go with the rest,\n We cannot be stopped at a given point\u2014that is no satisfaction,\n To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space of time\u2014that is\n         no satisfaction,\n We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time.\n If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung,\n If maggots and rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betrayed!\n Then indeed suspicion of death.\n Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now:\n Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?\n Pleasantly and well-suited I walk:\n Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good;\n The whole universe indicates that it is good,\n The past and the present indicate that it is good.\n How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my Soul!\n How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!\n What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,\n The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids\n         are perfect;\n Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they\n         yet pass on.\n My Soul! if I realise you, I have satisfaction;\n Animals and vegetables! if I realise you, I have satisfaction;\n Laws of the earth and air! if I realise you, I have satisfaction.\n I cannot define my satisfaction, yet it is so;\n I cannot define my life, yet it is so.\n It comes to me now!\n I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul!\n The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the\n         animals!\n I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float\n is for it, and the cohering is for it; And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and death are\n altogether for it!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":88,"Keys":"THIS COMPOST.\n","Values":" Something startles me where I thought I was safest;\n I withdraw from the still woods I loved;\n I will not go now on the pastures to walk;\n I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;\n I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.\n O how can the ground not sicken?\n How can you be alive, you growths of spring?\n How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?\n Are they not continually putting distempered corpses in you?\n Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?\n Where have you disposed of their carcasses?\n Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;\n Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?\n I do not see any of it upon you to-day\u2014or perhaps I am deceived;\n I will run a furrow with my plough\u2014I will press my spade through the sod,\n         and turn it up underneath;\n I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.\n Behold this compost! behold it well!\n Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person\u2014Yet behold!\n The grass covers the prairies,\n The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,\n The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,\n The apple-buds cluster together on the apple branches,\n The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,\n The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,\n The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their\n         nests,\n The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,\n The new-born of animals appear\u2014the calf is dropped from the cow, the colt\n         from the mare,\n Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark-green leaves,\n Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;\n The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour\n         dead.\n What chemistry!\n That the winds are really not infectious,\n That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so\n         amorous after me;\n That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its\n         tongues,\n That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves\n         in it,\n That all is clean for ever and for ever,\n That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,\n That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,\n That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard\u2014that\n         melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,\n That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,\n Though probably every sphere of grass rises out of what was once a catching\n         disease.\n Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,\n It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,\n It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions\n         of diseased corpses,\n It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,\n It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,\n It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them\n         at last.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":89,"Keys":"DESPAIRING CRIES.\n","Values":" Despairing  cries  float  ceaselessly  toward  me,  day  and  night,  The  sad  voice  of  Death\u2014the  call  of  my\n nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, \"The Sea I am quickly to sail: come tell me, Come tell me\n where I am speeding\u2014tell me my destination.\"\n I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you;\n I approach, hear, behold\u2014the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your\n         mute inquiry,\n \"Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me.\"\n Old age, alarmed, uncertain\u2014A young woman's voice, appealing to me for\n         comfort;\n A young man's voice, \"Shall I not escape?\"\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":90,"Keys":"THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE\n","Values":"By the City Dead-House, by the gate,\n As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangour,\n I curious pause\u2014for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought;\n Her corpse they deposit unclaimed, it lies on the damp brick pavement.\n The divine woman, her body\u2014I see the body\u2014I look on it alone,\n That house once full of passion and beauty\u2014all else I notice not;\n Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odours morbific\n         impress me;\n But the house alone\u2014that wondrous house\u2014that delicate fair house\u2014that\n         ruin!\n That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built,\n Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted\u2014or all the\n         old high-spired cathedrals,\n That little house alone, more than them all\u2014poor, desperate house!\n Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul!\n Unclaimed, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips;\n Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought of you,\n Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled! crushed!\n House of life\u2014erewhile talking and laughing\u2014but ah, poor house! dead even\n         then;\n Months, years, an echoing, garnished house-but dead, dead, dead!\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":91,"Keys":"TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE.\n","Values":" From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you:\n You are to die\u2014Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,\n I am exact and merciless, but I love you\u2014There is no escape for you.\n Softly I lay my right hand upon you\u2014you just feel it;\n I do not argue\u2014I bend my head close, and half envelop it,\n I sit quietly by\u2014I remain faithful,\n I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbour,\n I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily\u2014that is\n         eternal,\u2014\n The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.\n The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions!\n Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence\u2014you smile!\n You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,\n You do not see the medicines\u2014you do not mind the weeping friends\u2014I am\n         with you,\n I exclude others from you\u2014there is nothing to be commiserated,\n I do not commiserate\u2014I congratulate you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":92,"Keys":"UNNAMED LANDS.\n","Values":" Nations, ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten\n         thousand years before these States;\n Garnered clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travelled\n         their course, and passed on;\n What vast-built cities\u2014what orderly republics\u2014what pastoral tribes and\n         nomads;\n What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others;\n What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;\n What sort of marriage\u2014what costumes\u2014what physiology and phrenology;\n What of liberty and slavery among them\u2014what they thought of death and the\n         soul;\n Who were witty and wise\u2014who beautiful and poetic\u2014who brutish and\n         undeveloped;\n Not a mark, not a record remains,\u2014And yet all remains.\n O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we\n         are for nothing;\n I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we\n         now belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it.\n Afar they stand\u2014yet near to me they stand,\n Some with oval countenances, learned and calm,\n Some naked and savage\u2014Some like huge collections of insects,\n Some in tents\u2014herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,\n Some prowling through woods\u2014Some living peaceably on farms, labouring,\n         reaping, filling barns,\n Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries,\n         shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.\n Are those billions of men really gone?\n Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?\n Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?\n Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?\n I  believe,  of  all  those  billions  of  men  and  women  that  filled  the  unnamed  lands,  every  one  exists  this\n hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of\n what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinned, in life.\n I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any\n         more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;\n Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games,\n         wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect\n         their results curiously await in the yet unseen world\u2014counterparts\n         of what accrued to them in the seen world;\n I suspect I shall meet them there,\n I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":93,"Keys":"SIMILITUDE.\n","Values":" On the beach at night alone,\n As the old Mother sways her to and fro, singing her savage and husky song,\n As I watch the bright stars shining\u2014I think a thought of the clef of the\n         universes, and of the future.\n A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,\n All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets,\n         asteroids,\n All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,\n All distances of place, however wide,\n All distances of time\u2014all inanimate forms,\n All Souls\u2014all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in\n         different worlds,\n All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes\u2014the fishes, the brutes,\n All men and women\u2014me also;\n All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, languages;\n All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any\n         globe;\n All lives and deaths\u2014all of the past, present, future;\n This vast similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall for ever\n         span them, and compactly hold them.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":94,"Keys":"THE SQUARE DEIFIC.\n","Values":"GOD.\n Chanting the Square Deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides;\n Out of the old and new\u2014out of the square entirely divine,\n Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)\u2014From this side JEHOVAH am I,\n Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;\n Not Time affects me\u2014I am Time, modern as any;\n Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments;\n As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,\n Aged beyond computation\u2014yet ever new\u2014ever with those mighty laws rolling,\n Relentless, I forgive no man\u2014whoever sins dies\u2014I will have that man's\n         life;\n Therefore let none expect mercy\u2014Have the seasons, gravitation, the\n         appointed days, mercy?\u2014No more have I;\n But as the seasons, and gravitation\u2014and as all the appointed days, that\n         forgive not,\n I dispense from this side judgments inexorable, without the least remorse.\n SAVIOUR.\n Consolator most mild, the promised one advancing,\n With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,\n Foretold by prophets and poets, in their most wrapt prophecies and poems;\n From this side, lo! the Lord CHRIST gazes\u2014lo! Hermes I\u2014lo! mine is\n         Hercules' face;\n All sorrow, labour, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself;\n Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and crucified\u2014and\n         many times shall be again;\n All the world have I given up for my dear brothers' and sisters' sake\u2014for\n         the soul's sake;\n Wending my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss of\n         affection;\n For I am affection\u2014I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope, and all-\n         enclosing charity;\n Conqueror yet\u2014for before me all the armies and soldiers of the earth shall\n         yet bow\u2014and all the weapons of war become impotent:\n With indulgent words, as to children\u2014with fresh and sane words, mine only;\n Young and strong I pass, knowing well I am destined myself to an early\n         death:\n But my Charity has no death\u2014my Wisdom dies not, neither early nor late,\n And my sweet Love, bequeathed here and elsewhere, never dies.\n SATAN.\n Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,\n Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,\n Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,\n With sudra face and worn brow\u2014black, but in the depths of my heart proud\n         as any;\n Lifted, now and always, against whoever, scorning, assumes to rule me;\n Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles,\n Though it was thought I was baffled and dispelled, and my wiles done\u2014but\n         that will never be;\n Defiant I SATAN still live\u2014still utter words\u2014in new lands duly appearing,\n         and old ones also;\n Permanent here, from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any,\n Nor time, nor change, shall ever change me or my words.\n THE SPIRIT.\n Santa SPIRITA,breather, life,\n Beyond the light, lighter than light,\n Beyond the flames of hell\u2014joyous, leaping easily above hell;\n Beyond Paradise\u2014perfumed solely with mine own perfume;\n Including all life on earth\u2014touching, including God\u2014including Saviour and\n         Satan;\n Ethereal, pervading all\u2014for, without me, what were all? what were God?\n Essence of forms\u2014life of the real identities, permanent, positive, namely\n         the unseen,\n Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man\u2014I, the\n         General Soul,\n Here the Square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,\n Breathe my breath also through these little songs.\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":95,"Keys":"SONGS OF PARTING.\n","Values":null},{"Unnamed: 0":96,"Keys":"SINGERS AND POETS.\n","Values":" The indications and tally of time;\n Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs;\n Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts;\n What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of\n         singers, and their words;\n The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark\u2014but\n the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark;\n The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,\n His insight and power encircle things and the human race,\n He is the glory and extract, thus far, of things and of the human race.\n The singers do not beget\u2014only the POET begets; The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often\n enough\u2014but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems; Not every century,\n or  every  five  centuries,  has  contained  such  a  day,  for  all  its  names.  The  singers  of  successive  hours  of\n centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers; The name of each\n is  eye-singer,  ear-singer,  head-singer,  sweet-singer,  echo-singer,  parlour-singer,  love-singer,  or  something\n else.\n All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems;\n The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and\n         fathers;\n The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.\n Divine  instinct,  breadth  of  vision,  the  law  of  reason,  health,  rudeness  of  body,  withdrawnness,  gaiety,\n sun-tan, air-sweetness\u2014such are some of the words of poems.\n The  sailor  and  traveller  underlie  the  maker  of  poems,  The  builder,  geometer,  chemist,  anatomist,\n phrenologist, artist\u2014all these underlie the maker of poems.\n The words of the true poems give you more than poems,\n They give you, to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war,\n         peace, behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and everything else,\n They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes,\n They do not seek beauty\u2014they are sought,\n For ever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain,\n         love-sick.\n They prepare for death\u2014yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,\n They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;\n Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to\n         learn one of the meanings,\n To launch off with absolute faith\u2014to sweep through the ceaseless rings,\n         and never be quiet again.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":97,"Keys":"TO A HISTORIAN.\n","Values":"You who celebrate bygones:\n Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races\u2014the life that has\n         exhibited itself;\n Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers,\n         and priests.\n I, habitu\u00e9 of the Alleghanies, treating man as he is in himself, in his own\n         rights,\n Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, the great\n         pride of man in himself;\n Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be;\n I project the history of the future.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":98,"Keys":"FIT AUDIENCE.\n","Values":" Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,\n Without one thing, all will be useless:\n I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,\n I am not what you supposed, but far different.\n Who is he that would become my follower?\n Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?\n The way is suspicious\u2014the result uncertain, perhaps destructive;\n You would have to give up all else\u2014I alone would expect to be your God,\n         sole and exclusive;\n Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,\n The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around\n         you, would have to be abandoned;\n Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further\u2014Let go\n         your hand from my shoulders,\n Put me down, and depart on your way.\n Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,\n Or back of a rock, in the open air,\n (For in any roofed room of a house I emerge not\u2014nor in company,\n And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)\n But just possibly with you on a high hill\u2014first watching lest any person,\n         for miles around, approach unawares\u2014\n Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some\n         quiet island,\n Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,\n With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss,\n For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.\n Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,\n Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,\n Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;\n For thus, merely touching you, is enough\u2014is best,\n And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep, and be carried eternally.\n But these leaves conning, you con at peril,\n For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,\n They will elude you at first, and still more afterward\u2014I will certainly\n         elude you,\n Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!\n Already you see I have escaped from you.\n For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,\n Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,\n Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,\n Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove\n         victorious,\n Nor will my poems do good only\u2014they will do just as much evil, perhaps\n         more;\n For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not\n         hit\u2014that which I hinted at;\n Therefore release me, and depart on your way.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":99,"Keys":"SINGING IN SPRING.\n","Values":"These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers:\n For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?\n And who but I should be the poet of comrades?\n Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world\u2014but soon I pass the gates,\n Now along the pond-side\u2014now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,\n Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked\n         from the fields, have accumulated,\n Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly\n         cover them\u2014Beyond these I pass,\n Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,\n Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence;\n Alone, I had thought\u2014yet soon a silent troop gathers around me;\n Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,\n They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive\u2014thicker they come, a great\n         crowd, and I in the middle,\n Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,\n Plucking something for tokens\u2014tossing toward whoever is near me.\n Here lilac, with a branch of pine,\n Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida,\n         as it hung trailing down,\n Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,\n And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side,\n (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me\u2014and returns again, never to\n         separate from me,\n And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades\u2014this Calamus-\n         rootshall,\n Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)\n And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,\n And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,\n These I, compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits,\n Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,\n Indicating to each one what he shall have\u2014giving something to each.\n But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve;\n I will give of it\u2014but only to them that love as I myself am capable of\n         loving.\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":100,"Keys":"LOVE OF COMRADES.\n","Values":" Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;\n I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!\n I will make divine magnetic lands,\n         With the love of comrades,\n           With the life-long love of comrades.\n I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,\n         and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies;\n I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks;\n         By the love of comrades,\n           By the manly love of comrades.\n For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!\n For you! for you, I am trilling these songs,\n         In the love of comrades,\n           In the high-towering love of comrades.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":101,"Keys":"PULSE OF MY LIFE.\n","Values":"Not heaving from my ribbed breast only;\n Not in sighs at night, in rage, dissatisfied with myself;\n Not in those long-drawn, ill-suppressed sighs;\n Not in many an oath and promise broken;\n Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition;\n Not in the subtle nourishment of the air;\n Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists;\n Not in the curious systole and diastole within, which will one day cease;\n Not in many a hungry wish, told to the skies only;\n Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone, far in the\n         wilds;\n Not in husky pantings through clenched teeth;\n Not in sounded and resounded words\u2014chattering words, echoes, dead words;\n Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,\n Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day;\n Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you and dismiss you\n         continually\u2014Not there;\n Not in any or all of them, O Adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!\n Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these songs.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":102,"Keys":"AUXILIARIES.\n","Values":"WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?\n Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal;\n And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,\n And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":103,"Keys":"REALITIES.\n","Values":" As I walk, solitary, unattended,\n Around me I hear that \u00e9clat of the world\u2014politics, produce,\n The announcements of recognised things\u2014science,\n The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions.\n I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)\n The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen,\n And hear the endorsement of all, and do not object to it.\n But I too announce solid things;\n Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing\u2014they serve,\n They stand for realities\u2014all is as it should be.\n Then my realities;\n What else is so real as mine?\n Libertad, and the divine Average-Freedom to every slave on the face of the\n         earth,\n The rapt promises and lumin\u00e9of seers\u2014the spiritual\n         world\u2014these centuries-lasting songs,\n And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.\n For we support all,\n After the rest is done and gone, we remain,\n There is no final reliance but upon us;\n Democracy rests finally upon us, (I, my brethren, begin it,)\n And our visions sweep through eternity.\n \n"},{"Unnamed: 0":104,"Keys":"NEARING DEPARTURE.\n","Values":" As nearing departure,\n As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,\n A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.\n I shall go forth,\n I shall traverse the States\u2014but I cannot tell whither or how long;\n Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly\n         cease.\n O book and chant! must all then amount to but this?\n Must we barely arrive at this beginning of me?\u2026\n And yet it is enough, O soul!\n O soul! we have positively appeared\u2014that is enough.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":105,"Keys":"POETS TO COME.\n","Values":" Poets to come!\n Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and what we are for;\n But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before\n         known,\n You must justify me.\n I but write one or two indicative words for the future,\n I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.\n I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual\n         look upon you, and then averts his face,\n Leaving it to you to prove and define it,\n Expecting the main things from you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":106,"Keys":"CENTURIES HENCE.\n","Values":"Full of life now, compact, visible,\n I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,\n To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,\n To you, yet unborn, these seeking you.\n When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible;\n Now it is you, compact, visible, realising my poems, seeking me;\n Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your loving\n         comrade;\n Be it as if I were with you. Be not too certain but I am now with you.\n"},{"Unnamed: 0":107,"Keys":"SO LONG!\n","Values":" To conclude\u2014I announce what comes after me;\n I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then depart,\n I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all,\n I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations.\n When America does what was promised,\n When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and sea-board,\n When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,\n When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,\n When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,\n Then to me my due fruition.\n I have pressed through in my own right,\n I have offered my style to every one\u2014I have journeyed with confident step.\n While my pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long!\n And take the young woman's hand, and the young man's hand for the last\n         time.\n I announce natural persons to arise,\n I announce justice triumphant,\n I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,\n I announce the justification of candour, and the justification of pride.\n I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,\n I announce the Union, out of all its struggles and wars, more and more\n         compact,\n I announce splendours and majesties to make all the previous politics of\n         the earth insignificant.\n I announce a man or woman coming\u2014perhaps you are the one (So long!) I announce the great individual,\n fluid  as  Nature,  chaste,  affectionate,  compassionate,  fully  armed.  I  announce  a  life  that  shall  be  copious,\n vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.\n O thicker and faster! (So long!)\n O crowding too close upon me;\n I foresee too much\u2014it means more than I thought,\n It appears to me I am dying.\n Hasten throat, and sound your last!\n Salute me\u2014salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.\n Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,\n At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,\n Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,\n Curious enveloped messages delivering,\n Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in the dirt dropping,\n Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,\n To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the seed leaving,\n To troops out of me rising\u2014they the tasks I have set promulging,\n To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing\u2014their affection me more\n clearly explaining,\n To young men my problems offering\u2014no dallier I\u2014I the muscle of their\n         brains trying,\n So I pass\u2014a little time vocal, visible, contrary,\n Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for\u2014death making me really\n         undying,\u2014\n The best of me then when no longer visible\u2014for toward that I have been\n incessantly preparing.\n What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut\n         mouth?\n Is there a single final farewell?\n My songs cease\u2014I abandon them,\n From behind the screen where I hid, I advance personally, solely to you.\n Camerado! This is no book;\n Who touches this touches a man.\n (Is it night? Are we here alone?)\n It is I you hold, and who holds you,\n I spring from the pages into your arms\u2014decease calls me forth.\n O how your fingers drowse me!\n Your breath falls around me like dew\u2014your pulse lulls the tympans of my\n         ears,\n I feel immerged from head to foot,\n Delicious\u2014enough.\n Enough, O deed impromptu and secret!\n Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summed-up past!\n"}]