Always
our old feuillage!
Always Florida's green
peninsula--always the priceless delta of
Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,
Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver
mountains of New Mexico--always soft-breath'd Cuba,
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern sea,
inseparable with the
slopes drain'd by the Eastern and
Western seas,
The area the eighty-third year of these
States, the three and a half
millions of square miles,
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on
the main, the
thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families and the same number
of
dwellings--always these, and more, branching forth
into numberless branches,
Always the free range and
diversity--always the continent of Democracy;
Always the
prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Kanada,
the snows;
Always these compact lands tied at the hips
with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes;
Always the
West with strong native persons, the increasing density
there, the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical,
scorning invaders;
All sights, South, North, East--all
deeds promiscuously done at all times,
All characters,
movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things
gathering,
On interior rivers by night in the glare of
pine knots, steamboats wooding up,
Sunlight by day on the
valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys
of the
Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and
Delaware,
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey
haunting the Adirondacks the
hills, or lapping the
Saginaw waters to drink,
In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake
lost from the flock, sitting on the water rocking silently,
In farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labour
done,
they rest standing, they are too tired,
Afar on
arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play
around,
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd,
the farthest polar sea,
ripply, crystalline,
open, beyond the floes,
White drift spooning ahead where
the ship in the tempest dashes,
On solid land what is
done in cities as the bells strike midnight together,
In
primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of
the
wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse
bellow of the elk,
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of
Moosehead lake, in summer
visible through the clear
waters, the great trout swimming,
In lower latitudes in
warmer air in the Carolinas the large black
buzzard
floating slowly high beyond the tree tops,
Below, the red
cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and cypresses
growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat,
Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants,
parasites with
colour'd flowers and berries
enveloping huge trees,
The waving drapery on the live-oak
trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind,
The
camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires
and the
cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses,
feeding from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the
leaves of the old sycamore-trees, the
flames with the
black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising;
Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North
Carolina's
coast, the shad-fishery and the
herring-fishery, the large
sweep-seines, the windlasses
on shore work'd by horses,
the clearing, curing, and
packing-houses;
Deep in the forest in piney woods
turpentine dropping from the
incisions in the trees,
there are the turpentine works,
There are the negroes at
work in good health, the ground in all
directions is
cover'd with pine straw;
In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves
busy in the coalings, at the forge,
by the furnace-blaze,
or at the corn-shucking,
In Virginia, the planter's son
returning after a long absence, joyfully
welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,
On rivers
boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under
shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to
the sound of the banjo or fiddle,
others sit on the
gunwale smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon the
mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing
in the Great
Dismal Swamp,
There are the greenish waters, the resinous
odour, the plenteous
moss, the cypress-tree, and the
juniper-tree;
Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the
target company from an
excursion returning home at
evening, the musket-muzzles all
bear bunches of flowers
presented by women;
Children at play, or on his father's
lap a young boy fallen asleep
(how his lips move! how he
smiles in his sleep!),
The scout riding on horseback over
the plains west of the
Mississippi, he ascends a knoll
and sweeps his eyes around;
California life, the miner,
bearded, dress'd in his rude costume, the
stanch
California friendship, the sweet air, the graves one in
passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;
Down in
Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving
mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks
and wharves;
Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide,
the American Soul, with equal
hemispheres, one Love, one
Dilation or Pride;
In arri�re the peace-talk with the
Iroquois the aborigines, the
calumet, the pipe of
good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,
The sachem
blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the
earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted
faces and guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the
war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file,
the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter of
enemies;
All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes
of these States, reminiscences, institutions,
All these
States compact, every square mile of these States without
excepting a particle;
Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and
country fields, Paumanok's fields,
Observing the spiral
flight of two little yellow butterflies shuffling
between
each other, ascending high in the air,
The darting
swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveller
southward but returning northward early in the spring,
The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of
cows and
shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the
roadside,
The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco,
The
departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,
The setting
summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of
flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the
room,
darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows
in specks
on the opposite wall where the shine is;
The
athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of
listeners,
Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the
copiousness, the
individuality of the States, each for
itself--the money-makers,
Factories, machinery, the
mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all
certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom,
futurity,
In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands,
the stars--on the firm earth, the lands, my lands,
O
lands! all so dear to me--what you are (whatever it is), I
putting
it at random in these songs, become a part of
that, whatever it is,
Southward there, I screaming, with
wings slow flapping, with the
myriads of gulls wintering
along the coasts of Florida,
Otherways there
atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the
Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the
Saskatchewan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing
and skipping and running,
Northward, on the sands, on
some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with
parties of snowy
herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants,
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from
piercing
the crow with its bill, for amusement--and I
triumphantly twittering,
The migrating flock of wild
geese alighting in autumn to refresh
themselves, the body
of the flock feed, the sentinels outside
move around with
erect heads watching, and are from time to
time reliev'd
by other sentinels--and I feeding and taking turns with the
rest,
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox,
corner'd by hunters,
rising desperately on his hind-feet,
and plunging with his
fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as
knives--and I, plunging at the hunters, corner'd and
desperate,
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping,
store-houses,
and the countless workmen working in the
shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and
no less in myself
than the whole of the Mannahatta in
itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever-united
lands--my body no more
inevitable united, part to part,
and made out of a thousand
diverse contributions one
identity, any more than my lands are
inevitably united
and made ONE IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of
the great pastoral Plains,
Cities, labours, death,
animals, products, war, good and evil--these me,
These
affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me
and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the
union of them, to afford the like to you?
Whoever you
are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be
eligible as I am?
How can I but as here chanting, invite
you for yourself to collect
bouquets of the incomparable
feuillage of these States? |
