Chapter 6 of 7 · 3997 words · ~20 min read

Part 6

Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes, Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky, Emblem of general maternity lifted above all, Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons, Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life, World of the real--world of the twain in one, World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone, Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials, By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent, Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here (The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come), Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I define thee, How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past, I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe, But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee, I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, I merely thee ejaculate!

Thee in thy future, Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit, Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all, Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity, Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd so long upon the mind of man, The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man; Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male--thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East, (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son, endear'd alike, forever equal), Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain, Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest material civilization must remain in vain), Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship--thee in no single bible, saviour, merely, Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any (Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century's visible growth, But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!), Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students, born of thee, Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, Thee in thy ultimata (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied), Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, These! these in thee (certain to come), to-day I prophesy.

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee, Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself, Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars, To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom, Set in the sky of Law.)

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith, Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale.

Not for success alone, Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over (Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not war); In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic, But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be, They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee, While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, Equable, natural, mystical Union thou (the mortal with immortal blent), Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind, The soul, its destinies.

The soul, its destinies, the real real (Purport of all these apparitions of the real); In thee America, the soul, its destinies, Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd (by these thyself solidifying), Thou mental, moral orb--thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! The Present holds thee not--for such vast growth as thine, For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.

WHAT BEST I SEE IN THEE

_To U. S. G. return'd from his World's Tour._

What best I see in thee Is not that where thou mov'st down history's great highways, Ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike victory's dazzle,

Or that thou sat'st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm'd upon Who walk'd with kings with even pace the round world's promenade; But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front, Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world's promenade, Were all so justified.

AS I WALK THESE BROAD MAJESTIC DAYS

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace (For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific Ideal, Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Longer campaigns and crises, labours beyond all others), Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce, The announcements of recognized things, science, The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships (they will last a few years), The vast factories with their foremen and workmen, And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things, Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight, They stand for realities--all is as it should be.

Then my realities; What else is so real as mine? Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

THE UNITED STATES TO OLD WORLD CRITICS

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

YEARS OF THE MODERN

Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd! Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas, I see not America only, not only Liberty's nation but other nations preparing, I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races, The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights; Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms, Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me, This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams O years! Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake.) The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.

O STAR OF FRANCE

1870-71

O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds, Nor helm nor helmsman.

Dim smitten star, Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul its dearest hopes, The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood, Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.

Star crucified--by traitors sold, Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land, Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.

Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee, Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all, And left thee sacred.

In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly, In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price, In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed thee, In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains, This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet, The spear thrust in thy side.

O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long! Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on!

Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons, Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, Onward beneath the sun following its course, So thee O ship of France!

Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd, The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication, When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world, (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours Columbia), Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star, In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, Shall beam immortal.

THOUGHTS

Of these years I sing, How they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through parturitions, How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people--illustrates evil as well as good, The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity, How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to other results).

How the great cities appear--how the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sound and resounding, keep on and on, How society waits unform'd, and is for a while between things ended and things begun, How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun, And how the States are complete in themselves--and how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine and of the States will in turn be convuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions, And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses too, serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors, serves, And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.

Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births, Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to impregnable and swarming places, Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be, Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and the rest (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska), Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for--and of what all sights, North, South, East and West, are, Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind; Of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake, Of the present, passing, departing--of the growth of completer men than any yet, Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the Mississippi flows, Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected, Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of inalienable homesteads, Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and sweet blood, Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there, Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the Anahuacs, Of these songs, well understood there (being made for that area), Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there (O it lurks in me night and day--what is gain after all to savageness and freedom?).

BY BLUE ONTARIO'S SHORE

By blue Ontario's shore, As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, _Chant me the poem_, it said, _that comes from the soul of America, chant me the carol of victory, And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet, And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy._

(Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, And death and infidelity at every step.)

A Nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

A breed whose proof is in time and deeds, What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections, We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves, We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world, From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.

(O Mother--O Sisters dear! If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us, It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? There can be any number of supremes--one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another.

All is eligible to all, All is for individuals, all is for you, No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.

All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

Piety and conformity to them that like, Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like, I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!

I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

(With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children, These clamours wild to a race of pride I give.)

O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before? If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.

Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse, Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey juice, Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature, Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.

Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, America brings builders, and brings its own styles.

The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and pass'd to other spheres, A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.

America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards, Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents, Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under their forms, Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house, Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, And that he shall be fittest for his days.

Any period one nation must lead, One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.

These States are the amplest poem, Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations, Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars, Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves, Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.

Land of lands and bards to corroborate! Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face, To him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's, His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, Built of the common stock, having room for far and near, Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land, Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and hanging chutes, Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him, If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them North or South, Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them, Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp, He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice, Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle, His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil, Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines, Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of the Constitution, The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants, The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable, The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers, Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States, Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost parts, Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men, Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology, The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd, The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good temper and open-handdedness, the whole composite make, The prevailing ardour and enterprise, the large amativeness, The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population, The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging, Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points, Factories, mercantile life, labour-saving machinery, the Northeast, Northwest, Southwest, Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life, Slavery--the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the rest, On and on to the grapple with it--Assassin! then your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more.

(Lo, high toward heaven, this day, Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd, I mark the new aureola around your head, No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce, With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing, And your port immovable where you stand, With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist, And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly crush'd beneath you, The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife, The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much, To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth, An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)

Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and ever keeps vista, Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn you, O days of the future I believe in you--I isolate myself for your sake, O America because you build for mankind I build for you, O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision and science, Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future. (Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore, I heard the voice arising demanding bards, By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account, That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest, Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.

(Soul of love and tongue of fire: Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world! Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)

Of these States the poet is the equable man, Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key, He is the equalizer of his age and land, He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking, In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government, In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood, The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith, He is no arguer, he is judgment (Nature accepts him absolutely), He judges not as the judges but as the sun falling round a helpless thing, As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.