Leaves of Grass | Page 9

of you unseen this hour with
irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet
in the edge of the summer ripples on
Paumanok's sands,
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every
town, Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to orators and
oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States as during life, each man and
woman my neighbor, The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him
and her, The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them, Yet
upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie, Yet returning

eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland, Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the
winter, the snow and ice welcome to me, Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite
State, or the
Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the
same, yet welcoming every
new brother,
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they
unite with the old ones,
Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and
equal,
coming personally to you now,
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
15
With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
For your life adhere to me,
(I
may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give
myself really to you, but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)
No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have
arrived, To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe, For such I
afford whoever can persevere to win them.
16
On my way a moment I pause,
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the
present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
harbinge glad and sublime,
And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red
aborigines.
The red aborigines,
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds
and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa,
Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,
Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,

Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the
water and the land with names.
17
Expanding and swift, henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick
and audacious, A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race
dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests, New politics, new
literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.
These, my voice announcing--I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been
calm within me! how I feel you,

fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
18
See, steamers steaming through my poems,
See, in my poems immigrants
continually coming and landing, See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut,
the flat-boat,
the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village, See, on the one side
the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea,
how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores, See, pastures and
forests in my poems--see, animals wild and tame--see,
beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass, See, in my
poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce, See, the many-cylinder'd
steam printing-press--see, the electric
telegraph stretching across the continent,
See, through Atlantica's depths pulses
American Europe reaching,
pulses of Europe duly return'd,
See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs,
panting, blowing
the steam-whistle,
See, ploughmen ploughing farms--see, miners digging mines--see,
the numberless factories,
See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools--see from
among them
superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working dresses,
See, lounging
through the shops and fields of the States, me
well-belov'd, close-held by day and night,
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there--read
the hints come at last.
19
O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
O a word to clear one's
path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O
now I triumph--and you shall also;
O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one
more desirer and lover! O to haste firm holding--to haste, haste on with me.
[BOOK III]
} Song of Myself
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For
every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer
grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents
born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to
cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but
never forgotten,