1
Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
Leaning
back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.
Libertad! I do not
know whether others behold what I behold,
In the
procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the
errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above,
around, or in the ranks marching,
But I will sing you a
song of what I behold Libertad.
When million-footed
Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,
When the
thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love,
When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell I
love spit their salutes,
When the fire-flashing guns have
fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a
delicate thin haze,
When gorgeous the countless straight
stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colours,
When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,
When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the
windows,
When Broadway is entirely given up to
foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
When the fa�ades of the houses are alive with people, when
eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,
When the
guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves
forward visible,
When the summons is made, when the
answer that waited thousands of years answers,
I too
arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the
crowd, and gaze with them.
2
Superb-faced Manhattan!
Comrade Americanos! to us, then
at last the Orient comes.
To us, my city,
Where
our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite
sides, to walk in the space between,
To-day our Antipodes
comes.
The Originatress comes,
The nest of
languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with
passion,
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing
garments,
With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and
glittering eyes,
The race of Brahma comes.
See my
cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the
procession,
As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine
it moves changing before us.
For not the envoys nor
the tann'd Japanee from his island only,
Lithe and silent
the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears,
the past, the dead,
The murky night-morning of wonder and
fable inscrutable,
The envelop'd mysteries, the old and
unknown hive-bees,
The north, the sweltering south,
eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients,
Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and
more are in the pageant-procession.
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,
bonze, brahmin, and llama,
Mandarin, farmer, merchant,
mechanic, and fisherman,
The singing-girl and the
dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, 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 seiz'd by me,
And I am
seiz'd by them, and friendlily held by them,
Till as here
them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.
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,
My
sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,
My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,
Commerce
opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races
reborn, refresh'd,
Lives, works resumed--the object I
know not--but the old, the Asiatic renew'd as it must be,
Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.
3
And you Libertad of the world!
You
shall sit in the middle well-pois'd thousands and thousands
of years,
As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come
to you,
As to-morrow from the other side the queen of
England sends her eldest son to you.
The sign is
reversing, the orb is enclosed,
The ring is circled, the
journey is done,
The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd,
nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole
box.
Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the
all-mother,
Be considerate with her now and ever hot
Libertad, for you are all,
Bend your proud neck to the
long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes
to you,
Bend your proud neck low for once, young
Libertad.
Were the children straying westward so
long? so wide the tramping?
Were the precedent dim ages
debouching westward from Paradise so long?
Were the
centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while
unknown, for you, for reasons?
They are justified,
they are accomplish'd, they shall now be turn'd the other
way also, to travel toward you thence,
They shall now
also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad. |
