These, and such as these, I, elate, saw saw with won der, yet pensive and masterful; All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me; Yet there with my soul I fed - I fed content, supercilious. 2 'T was well, O soul! 't was a good preparation you gave me! Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill; Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us; Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities; Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring; Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed inexhaustible?), What, to pavements and homesteads here- what were those storms of the mountains and sea? What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen? Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds? Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage; Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing frontCincinnati, Chicago, unchain'd; What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here! How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes! How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning! How DEMOCRACY, with desperate vengeful part strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning! (Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark, In a lull of the deafening confusion.) 3 Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities! Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good; My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment; Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half-satisfied; One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; -The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left - I sped to the certainties suitable to me; Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature's dauntlessness. I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only; I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire — on the water and air I waited long; But now I no longer wait - I am fully satisfied — I am glutted; I have witness'd the true lightning — I have witness'd my cities electric; I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise; Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds, No more the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea. THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD1 WALT WHITMAN 1 THOU Mother with thy equal brood, Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only, I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality, I'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul, I'd show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd. The paths to the house I seek to make, But leave to those to come the house itself. Belief I sing and preparation; As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the pres ent only, But greater still from what is yet to come, Out of that formula for thee I sing. 2 As a strong bird on pinions free, Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee. 1 Reprinted from Leaves of Grass through the generous permission of Mr. Horace Traubel. The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee not, Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library; But an odor I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois prairie, With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or Florida's glades, Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron, With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite, And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound, That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world. And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother, Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee, Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou transcendental Union! By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought, 3 Brain of the New World, what a task is thine, To formulate the Modern-out of the peerless grandeur of the modern, Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art, (Recast, may-be discard them, end them-may-be their work is done, who knows?) By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead, To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present. And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain, Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long, Thou carefully prepared by it so long — haply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it, It to eventuate in thee contain❜d in thee, the essence of the by-gone time Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee; Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing, Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, Of value is thy freight, 't is not the Present only, The Past is also stored in thee, Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone, Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars, With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee. With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant; |