Poems By Walt Whitman Part 4

Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern--and includes and is the soul; Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.

15.

Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.

Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States, Live words--words to the lands.

O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the gra.s.s-fields of the world! Land of those sweet-aired interminable plateaus!

Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west Colorado winds!

Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Ma.s.sachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut!

Land of the ocean sh.o.r.es! Land of sierras and peaks!

Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!

Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the pa.s.sionate ones!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!

The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters!

Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with perfect love!

I cannot be discharged from you--not from one, any sooner than another!

O Death! O!--for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with irrepressible love, Walking New England, a friend, a traveller, Splas.h.i.+ng my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's sands, Crossing the prairies--dwelling again in Chicago--dwelling in every town, Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts, Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls, Of and through the States, as during life[4]--each man and woman my neighbour, The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her, The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me--and I yet with any of them; Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river--yet in my house of adobie, Yet returning eastward--yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland, Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter--the snow and ice welcome to me, or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska; Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]

Yet sailing to other sh.o.r.es to annex the same--yet welcoming every new brother; Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with the old ones; Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal--coming personally to you now; Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

16.

With me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on.

For your life, adhere to me; Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you; I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to you--but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?

No dainty _dolce affettuoso_ I; Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived, To be wrestled with as I pa.s.s, for the solid prizes of the universe; For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

17.

On my way a moment I pause; Here for you! and here for America!

Still the Present I raise aloft--still the Future of the States I harbinge, glad and sublime; And for the Past, I p.r.o.nounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines!

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names; Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.

18.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth, Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious; A world primal again--vistas of glory, incessant and branching; A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests, New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These my voice announcing--I will sleep no more, but arise; You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

19.

See! steamers steaming through my poems!

See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own sh.o.r.es; See pastures and forests in my poems--See animals, wild and tame--See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly gra.s.s; See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered steam printing-press--See the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan; See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching--pulses of Europe, duly returned; See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle; See ploughmen, ploughing farms--See miners, digging mines--See the numberless factories; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools--See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.

20.

O Camerado close!

O you and me at last--and us two only.

O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!

O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!

O now I triumph--and you shall also; O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!

O to haste, firm holding--to haste, haste on, with me.

[Footnote 1: Paumanok is the native name of Long Island, State of New York.

It presents a fish-like shape on the map.]

[Footnote 2: Mannahatta, or Manhattan, is (as many readers will know) New York.]

[Footnote 3: 1856.]

[Footnote 4: The poet here contemplates himself as yet living spiritually and in his poems after the death of the body, still a friend and brother to all present and future American lands and persons.]

[Footnote 5: New Hamps.h.i.+re.]

[Footnote 6: New York State.]

_AMERICAN FEUILLAGE._

AMERICA always!

Always our own feuillage!

Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana!

Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!

Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breathed Cuba!

Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea--inseparable with the slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas!

The area the eighty-third year of these States[1]--the three and a half millions of square miles; The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main--the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings-- Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches; Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy!

Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada, the snows; Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons--the increasing density there-- the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths--a few noticed, myriads unnoticed.