1
Of these years I sing,
How
they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as
through parturitions,
How America illustrates birth,
muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment,
the
absolute success, despite of people--illustrates evil as
well as good,
The vehement struggle so fierce for unity
in one's-self;
How many hold despairingly yet to the
models departed, caste, myths,
obedience, compulsion, and
to infidelity,
How few see the arrived models, the
athletes, the Western States, or
see freedom or
spirituality, or hold any faith in results
(But I see the
athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and
inevitable, and they again leading to other results).
How the great cities appear--how the Democratic masses,
turbulent, wilful, as I love them,
How the whirl, the
contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sound and
resounding, keep on and on,
How society waits unform'd,
and is for a while between things ended and things begun,
How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph
of
freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of
society, and of all that is begun,
And how the States are
complete in themselves--and how all triumphs
and glories
are complete in themselves, to lead onward,
And how these
of mine and of the States will in turn be convuls'd,
and
serve other parturitions and transitions,
And how all
people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses too,
serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its
horrors, serves,
And how now or at any time each serves
the exquisite transition of death.
2
Of seeds
dropping into the ground, of births,
Of the steady
concentration of America, inland, upward, to impregnable and
swarming places,
Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and
the rest, are to be,
Of what a few years will show there
in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and the rest
(Or afar,
mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska),
Of
what the feuillage of America is the preparation for--and of
what
all sights, North, South, East and West, are,
Of
this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the
unnamed lost ever present in my mind;
Of the temporary
use of materials for identity's sake,
Of the present,
passing, departing--of the growth of completer men than any
yet,
Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver
the mother, the Mississippi flows,
Of mighty inland
cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected,
Of the new and
good names, of the modern developments, of inalienable
homesteads,
Of a free and original life there, of simple
diet and clean and sweet blood,
Of litheness, majestic
faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,
Of immense
spiritual results future years far West, each side of the
Anahuacs,
Of these songs, well understood there (being
made for that area),
Of the native scorn of grossness and
gain there
(O it lurks in me night and day--what is gain
after all to savageness and freedom?). |
