Leaves of Grass

BOOK II.

Starting from Paumanok
       1
  Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,
  Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother,
  After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
  Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,
  Or a soldier camp'd or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner
      in California,
  Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from
      the spring,
  Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
  Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,
  Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of
      mighty Niagara,
  Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and
      strong-breasted bull,
  Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,
      my amaze,
  Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the
      mountain-hawk,
  And heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thrush from the
      swamp-cedars,
  Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

       2
  Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
  The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
  Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
  This then is life,
  Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

  How curious! how real!
  Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

  See revolving the globe,
  The ancestor-continents away group'd together,
  The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus
      between.

  See, vast trackless spaces,
  As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,
  Countless masses debouch upon them,
  They are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

  See, projected through time,
  For me an audience interminable.

  With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,
  Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,
  One generation playing its part and passing on,
  Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,
  With faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me to listen,
  With eyes retrospective towards me.

       3
  Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!
  Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
  For you a programme of chants.

  Chants of the prairies,
  Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea,
  Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,
  Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant,
  Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.

       4
  Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,
  Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring,
  Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,
  And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect
      lovingly with you.

  I conn'd old times,
  I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,
  Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

  In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?
  Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

       5
  Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
  Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
  Language-shapers on other shores,
  Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
  I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left
      wafted hither,
  I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,)
  Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more
      than it deserves,
  Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
  I stand in my place with my own day here.