Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal
hemispheres--one Love, one Dilation or Pride.
--In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines--the
calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement,
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the
earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural
exclamations,
The setting-out of the war-party--the long and stealthy march,
The single-file--the swinging hatchets--the surprise and slaughter of
enemies.
--All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States--
reminiscences, all institutions,
All these States, compact--Every square mile of these States, without
excepting a particle--you also--me also.
Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields,
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling
between each other, ascending high in the air;
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects--the fall-traveller
southward, but returning northward early in the spring;
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and
shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside;
The city wharf--Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,
San Francisco,
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of
flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room,
darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on
the opposite wall, where the shine is.
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