BOOK XII

Song of the Broad-Axe

       1
  Weapon shapely, naked, wan,
  Head from the mother's bowels drawn,
  Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,
  Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,
  Resting the grass amid and upon,
  To be lean'd and to lean on.

  Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades,
      sights and sounds.
  Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,
  Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.

       2
  Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,
  Welcome are lands of pine and oak,
  Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,
  Welcome are lands of gold,
  Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,
  Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,
  Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and
      sweet potato,
  Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,
  Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,
  Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of
      orchards, flax, honey, hemp;
  Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,
  Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,
  Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,
  Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,
  Lands of iron—lands of the make of the axe.

       3
  The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,
  The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd for garden,
  The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull'd,
  The walling and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
  The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends,
      and the cutting away of masts,
  The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion'd houses and barns,
  The remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,
      families, goods,
  The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
  The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset
      anywhere,
  The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
  The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
  The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
  The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm'd faces,
  The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
  The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless
      impatience of restraint,
  The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the
      solidification;
  The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and
      sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,
  Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of
      snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
  The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural
      life of the woods, the strong day's work,
  The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the
      bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;
  The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
  The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
  The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them
      regular,
  Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they
      were prepared,
  The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their
      curv'd limbs,
  Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by
      posts and braces,
  The hook'd arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
  The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail'd,
  Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
  The echoes resounding through the vacant building:
  The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,
  The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully
      bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,
  The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly
      laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,
  The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the
      trowels striking the bricks,
  The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place,
      and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,
  The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the
      steady replenishing by the hod-men;
  Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,
  The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward
      the shape of a mast,
  The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,
  The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,
  The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,
  The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats,
      stays against the sea;
  The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the
      close-pack'd square,
  The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
  The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,
      the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
  The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the
      hooks and ladders and their execution,
  The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors
      if the fire smoulders under them,
  The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;
  The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,
  The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
  The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the
      edge with his thumb,
  The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;
  The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
  The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
  The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
  The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
  The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
  The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
  The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe
      thither,
  The siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty,
  The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce
      and parley,
  The sack of an old city in its time,
  The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,
  Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
  Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the
      gripe of brigands,
  Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
  The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
  The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,
  The power of personality just or unjust.

       4
  Muscle and pluck forever!
  What invigorates life invigorates death,
  And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
  And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
  For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
      delicatesse of the earth and of man,
  And nothing endures but personal qualities.

  What do you think endures?
  Do you think a great city endures?
  Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the
      best built steamships?
  Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering,
      forts, armaments?

  Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,
  They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
  The show passes, all does well enough of course,
  All does very well till one flash of defiance.

  A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
  If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the
      whole world.

       5
  The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd
      wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
  Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the
      anchor-lifters of the departing,
  Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops
      selling goods from the rest of the earth,
  Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where
      money is plentiest,
  Nor the place of the most numerous population.

  Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
  Where the city stands that is belov'd by these, and loves them in
      return and understands them,
  Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
  Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
  Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
  Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
  Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of
      elected persons,
  Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of
      death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
  Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside
      authority,
  Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,
      Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
  Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
      themselves,
  Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
  Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
  Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
  Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
  Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
  Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
  Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
  Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
  There the great city stands.

       6
  How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
  How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
      man's or woman's look!

  All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;
  A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,
  When he or she appears materials are overaw'd,
  The dispute on the soul stops,
  The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn'd back, or laid away.

  What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
  What is your respectability now?
  What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?
  Where are your jibes of being now?
  Where are your cavils about the soul now?

       7
  A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for
      all the forbidding appearance,
  There is the mine, there are the miners,
  The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd, the hammersmen
      are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
  What always served and always serves is at hand.

  Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,
  Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek,
  Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
  Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,
  Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose
      relics remain in Central America,
  Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and
      the druids,
  Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the
      snow-cover'd hills of Scandinavia,
  Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough
      sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves,
  Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral
      tribes and nomads,
  Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic,
  Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,
  Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the
      making of those for war,
  Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,
  For the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages,
  Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.

       8
  I see the European headsman,
  He stands mask'd, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,
  And leans on a ponderous axe.

  (Whom have you slaughter'd lately European headsman?
  Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)

  I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
  I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
  Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers, rejected kings,
  Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.

  I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
  The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
  (Mind you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)

  I see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe,
  Both blade and helve are clean,
  They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp no more
      the necks of queens.

  I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,
  I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,

  I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race,
      the newest, largest race.

       9
  (America! I do not vaunt my love for you,
  I have what I have.)

  The axe leaps!
  The solid forest gives fluid utterances,
  They tumble forth, they rise and form,
  Hut, tent, landing, survey,
  Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
  Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable,
  Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
  Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,
  Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
      wedge, rounce,
  Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
  Work-box, chest, string'd instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
  Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
  Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick,
  Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.

  The shapes arise!
  Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that
      neighbors them,
  Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kenebec,
  Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little
      lakes, or on the Columbia,
  Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly
      gatherings, the characters and fun,
  Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by the
      Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
  Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.

  The shapes arise!
  Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,
  Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,
  Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,
  Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,
  Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in
      many a bay and by-place,
  The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the
      hackmatack-roots for knees,
  The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
      workmen busy outside and inside,
  The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,
      bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.

       10
  The shapes arise!
  The shape measur'd, saw'd, jack'd, join'd, stain'd,
  The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,
  The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of
      the bride's bed,
  The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,
      the shape of the babe's cradle,
  The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet,
  The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly
      parents and children,
  The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and
      woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman,
  The roof over the supper joyously cook'd by the chaste wife, and joyously
      eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work.

  The shapes arise!
  The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him or
      her seated in the place,
  The shape of the liquor-bar lean'd against by the young rum-drinker
      and the old rum-drinker,
  The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot- steps,
  The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple,
  The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings,
  The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
      murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion'd arms,
  The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp'd
      crowd, the dangling of the rope.

  The shapes arise!
  Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,
  The door passing the dissever'd friend flush'd and in haste,
  The door that admits good news and bad news,
  The door whence the son left home confident and puff'd up,
  The door he enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence,
      diseas'd, broken down, without innocence, without means.

       11
  Her shape arises,
  She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
  The gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her gross and soil'd,
  She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal'd from her,
  She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
  She is the best belov'd, it is without exception, she has no reason
      to fear and she does not fear,
  Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle to
      her as she passes,
  She is silent, she is possess'd of herself, they do not offend her,
  She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,
  She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger than she is.

       12
  The main shapes arise!
  Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
  Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
  Shapes of turbulent manly cities,
  Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
  Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.





BOOK XIII

Song of the Exposition

       1
  (Ah little recks the laborer,
  How near his work is holding him to God,
  The loving Laborer through space and time.)

  After all not to create only, or found only,
  But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,
  To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,
  To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,
  Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,
  To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,
  These also are the lessons of our New World;
  While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!

  Long and long has the grass been growing,
  Long and long has the rain been falling,
  Long has the globe been rolling round.

       2
  Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
  Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
  That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and AEneas', Odysseus' wanderings,
  Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus,
  Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa's gate and on
      Mount Moriah,
  The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles,
      and Italian collections,
  For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
      awaits, demands you.

       3
  Responsive to our summons,
  Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination,
  Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
  She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,
  I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance,
  I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
  Upon this very scene.

  The dame of dames! can I believe then,
  Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?
  Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old
      associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
  But that she's left them all—and here?

  Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
  I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
  The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
      expression,
  Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,
  Hidden and cover'd by to-day's, foundation of to-day's,
  Ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain,
  Silent the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
      baffling tombs,
  Ended for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors, ended
      the primitive call of the muses,
  Calliope's call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
  Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the
      holy Graal,
  Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
  The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,
  Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
  Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its
      waters reflected,
  Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
      Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation;
  Pass'd! pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world,
      now void, inanimate, phantom world,
  Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,
  Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
      courtly dames,
  Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on,
  Blazon'd with Shakspere's purple page,
  And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

  I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigre, (having it
      is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey'd considerable,)
  Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for
      herself, striding through the confusion,
  By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,
  Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
  Smiling and pleas'd with palpable intent to stay,
  She's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware!

       4
  But hold—don't I forget my manners?
  To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant
      for?) to thee Columbia;
  In liberty's name welcome immortal! clasp hands,
  And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.

  Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
  I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,
  And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,
  Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same,
  The same old love, beauty and use the same.

       5
  We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves from thee,
  (Would the son separate himself from the father?)
  Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through
      past ages bending, building,
  We build to ours to-day.

  Mightier than Egypt's tombs,
  Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples,
  Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral,
  More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
  We plan even now to raise, beyond them all,
  Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,
  A keep for life for practical invention.

  As in a waking vision,
  E'en while I chant I see it rise, I scan and prophesy outside and in,
  Its manifold ensemble.

  Around a palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
  Earth's modern wonder, history's seven outstripping,
  High rising tier on tier with glass and iron facades,
  Gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfulest hues,
  Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson,
  Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner Freedom,
  The banners of the States and flags of every land,
  A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.

  Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect human
      life be started,
  Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.

  Not only all the world of works, trade, products,
  But all the workmen of the world here to be represented.

  Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
  In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization,
  Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by magic,
  The cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field,
  Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth
      before you,
  You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the new ones,
  You shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then
      bread baked by the bakers,
  You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and
      on till they become bullion,
  You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a
      composing-stick is,
  You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its cylinders,
      shedding the printed leaves steady and fast,
  The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you.

  In large calm halls, a stately museum shall teach you the infinite
      lessons of minerals,
  In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated—in
      another animals, animal life and development.

  One stately house shall be the music house,
  Others for other arts—learning, the sciences, shall all be here,
  None shall be slighted, none but shall here be honor'd, help'd, exampled.

       6
  (This, this and these, America, shall be your pyramids and obelisks,
  Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
  Your temple at Olympia.)

  The male and female many laboring not,
  Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
  With precious benefits to both, glory to all,
  To thee America, and thee eternal Muse.

  And here shall ye inhabit powerful Matrons!
  In your vast state vaster than all the old,
  Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
  To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes,
  Practical, peaceful life, the people's life, the People themselves,
  Lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace—elate, secure in peace.

       7
  Away with themes of war! away with war itself!
  Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of
      blacken'd, mutilated corpses!
  That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for
      lop-tongued wolves, not reasoning men,
  And in its stead speed industry's campaigns,
  With thy undaunted armies, engineering,
  Thy pennants labor, loosen'd to the breeze,
  Thy bugles sounding loud and clear.

  Away with old romance!
  Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts,
  Away with love-verses sugar'd in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers,
  Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide,
  The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,
  With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.

  To you ye reverent sane sisters,
  I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art,
  To exalt the present and the real,
  To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade,
  To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled,
  To manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig,
  To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers,
  For every man to see to it that he really do something, for every woman too;
  To use the hammer and the saw, (rip, or cross-cut,)
  To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
  To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
  To invent a little, something ingenious, to aid the washing, cooking,
      cleaning,
  And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.

  I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here,
  All occupations, duties broad and close,
  Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,
  The old, old practical burdens, interests, joys,
  The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,
  The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,
  Food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it,
  Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded man or
      woman, the perfect longeve personality,
  And helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its soul,
  For the eternal real life to come.

  With latest connections, works, the inter-transportation of the world,
  Steam-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum,
  These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable,
  The Pacific railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis and Gothard and
      Hoosac tunnels, the Brooklyn bridge,
  This earth all spann'd with iron rails, with lines of steamships
      threading in every sea,
  Our own rondure, the current globe I bring.

       8
  And thou America,
  Thy offspring towering e'er so high, yet higher Thee above all towering,
  With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
  Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
  Thee, ever thee, I sing.

  Thou, also thou, a World,
  With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
  Rounded by thee in one—one common orbic language,
  One common indivisible destiny for All.

  And by the spells which ye vouchsafe to those your ministers in earnest,
  I here personify and call my themes, to make them pass before ye.

  Behold, America! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!)
  For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;
  Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
  As in procession coming.

  Behold, the sea itself,
  And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;
  See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the
      green and blue,
  See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port,
  See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke.

  Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
  Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
  Wielding all day their axes.

  Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen,
  How the ash writhes under those muscular arms!

  There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
  Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges,
  Overhand so steady, overhand they turn and fall with joyous clank,
  Like a tumult of laughter.

  Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents,
  Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising,
  See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

  Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,
  Thy wealthy daughter-states, Eastern and Western,
  The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia, Texas,
      and the rest,
  Thy limitless crops, grass, wheat, sugar, oil, corn, rice, hemp, hops,
  Thy barns all fill'd, the endless freight-train and the bulging store-house,
  The grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards,
  Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold
      and silver,
  The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

  All thine O sacred Union!
  Ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines,
  City and State, North, South, item and aggregate,
  We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!

  Protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all!
  For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,)
  Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home,
  Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure,
  Nor aught, nor any day secure.

       9
  And thou, the Emblem waving over all!
  Delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,)
  Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably
      ensovereign'd,
  In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee flag,
  Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of
      stainless silk,
  But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter'd staff,
  Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast with desperate hands,
  Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long,
  'Mid cannons' thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and yell, and
      rifle-volleys cracking sharp,
  And moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as nothing risk'd,
  For thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp'd in blood,
  For sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might'st dally as now
      secure up there,
  Many a good man have I seen go under.

  Now here and these and hence in peace, all thine O Flag!
  And here and hence for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for them!
  And here and hence O Union, all the work and workmen thine!
  None separate from thee—henceforth One only, we and thou,
  (For the blood of the children, what is it, only the blood maternal?
  And lives and works, what are they all at last, except the roads to
      faith and death?)

  While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear Mother,
  We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee;
  Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross or lucre—
      it is for thee, the soul in thee, electric, spiritual!
  Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and States in thee!
  Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee!





BOOK XIV

Song of the Redwood-Tree

       1
  A California song,
  A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,
  A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,
  A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
  Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

  Farewell my brethren,
  Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,
  My time has ended, my term has come.

  Along the northern coast,
  Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,
  In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,
  With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse,
  With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong arms,
  Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood
      forest dense,
  I heard the might tree its death-chant chanting.

  The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,
  The quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,
  As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to
      join the refrain,
  But in my soul I plainly heard.

  Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
  Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,
  Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,
  That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but
      the future.

  You untold life of me,
  And all you venerable and innocent joys,
  Perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a summer sun,
  And the white snows and night and the wild winds;
  O the great patient rugged joys, my soul's strong joys unreck'd by man,
  (For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness, identity,
  And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,)
  Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
  Our time, our term has come.

  Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,
  We who have grandly fill'd our time,
  With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight,
  We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
  And leave the field for them.

  For them predicted long,
  For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,
  For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.'
  In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta, Nevadas,
  These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far Yosemite,
  To be in them absorb'd, assimilated.

  Then to a loftier strain,
  Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,
  As if the heirs, the deities of the West,
  Joining with master-tongue bore part.

  Not wan from Asia's fetiches,
  Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house,
  (Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
      scaffolds everywhere,
  But come from Nature's long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence,
  These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,
  To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,
  You promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.

  You occult deep volitions,
  You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself,
      giving not taking law,
  You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and
      love and aught that comes from life and love,
  You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, age
      upon age working in death the same as life,)
  You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould
      the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,
  You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal'd but ever alert,
  You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may-be
      unconscious of yourselves,
  Unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;
  You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
      statutes, literatures,
  Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,
      lands of the Western shore,
  We pledge, we dedicate to you.

  For man of you, your characteristic race,
  Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate to Nature,
  Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or roof,
  Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure,
  Here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others' formulas heed,)
  here fill his time,
  To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last,
  To disappear, to serve.

  Thus on the northern coast,
  In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the
      music of choppers' axes,
  The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan,
  Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic,
      ancient and rustling,
  The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,
  All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
  From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah,
  To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,
  The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the
      settlements, features all,
  In the Mendocino woods I caught.

       2
  The flashing and golden pageant of California,
  The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,
  The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south,
  Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs,
  The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry,
  The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening,
      the rich ores forming beneath;
  At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
  A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere,
  Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the
      whole world,
  To India and China and Australia and the thousand island paradises
      of the Pacific,
  Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,
      the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
  And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.

       3
  But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore,
  (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)
  I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
      till now deferr'd,
  Promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race.

  The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,
  In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees imperial,
  In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even vital air.

  Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,
  I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,
  Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of
      the past so grand,
  To build a grander future.