The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners;
Males, females, immigrants, combinations--the copiousness--the
individuality of the States, each for itself--the money-makers;
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces--the windlass, lever, pulley--
All certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity;
In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars--on the firm
earth, the lands, my lands!
O lands! O all so dear to me--what you are (whatever it is), I become a
part of that, whatever it is.
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of
gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida--or in Louisiana, with
pelicans breeding,
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the
Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan,
or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and
running;
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties
of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants;
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow
with its bill, for amusement--And I triumphantly twittering;
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
themselves--the body of the flock feed--the sentinels outside move
around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time
relieved by other sentinels--And I feeding and taking turns with
the rest;
In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising
desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the
hoofs as sharp as knives--And I plunging at the hunters, cornered
and desperate;
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the
countless workmen working in the shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and no less in myself than
the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more inevitably
united part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands
are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains,
Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil--these me,--
These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to
America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to
afford the like to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be
eligible as I am?
How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect
bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?
[Footnote 1: 1858-59.
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