Geography, the world, is in it;
The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond;
The coast you henceforth are facing--you Libertad! from your Western golden
shores;
The countries there, with their populations--the millions _en masse_, are
curiously here;
The swarming market-places--the temples, with idols ranged along the sides,
or at the end--bronze, brahmin, and lama;
The mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman;
The singing-girl and the dancing-girl--the ecstatic person--the divine
Buddha;
The secluded Emperors--Confucius himself--the great poets and heroes--the
warriors, the castes, all,
Trooping up, crowding from all directions--from the Altay mountains,
From Thibet--from the four winding and far-flowing rivers
of China,
From the Southern peninsulas, and the demi-continental islands--from
Malaysia;
These, and whatever belongs to them, palpable, show forth to me, and are
seized by me,
And I am seized by them, and friendlily held by them,
Till, as here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.
5.
For I too, raising my voice, join the ranks of this pageant;
I am the chanter--I chant aloud over the pageant;
I chant the world on my Western Sea;
I chant, copious, the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky;
I chant the new empire, grander than any before--As in a vision it comes to
me;
I chant America, the Mistress--I chant a greater supremacy;
I chant, projected, a thousand blooming cities yet, in time, on those
groups of sea-islands;
I chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes;
I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind;
I chant commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work--races
reborn, refreshed;
Lives, works, resumed--The object I know not--but the old, the Asiatic,
resumed, as it must be,
Commencing from this day, surrounded by the world.
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