1
AS a strong bird on pinions free, | |
| Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, | |
| Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, | |
| Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. | |
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| The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not, | 5 |
| Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, | |
| Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of foreign court, or indoor library; | |
| But an odor I’d bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in Maine—or breath of an Illinois prairie, | |
| With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia, or Tennessee—or from Texas uplands, or Florida’s glades, | |
| With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite; | 10 |
| And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound, | |
| That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world. | |
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| And for thy subtler sense, subtler refrains, O Union! | |
| Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee—mind-formulas fitted for thee—real, and sane, and large as these and thee; | |
| Thou, mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew—thou transcendental Union! | 15 |
| By thee Fact to be justified—blended with Thought; | |
| Thought of Man justified—blended with God: | |
| Through thy Idea—lo! the immortal Reality! | |
| Through thy Reality—lo! the immortal Idea! | |
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2
Brain of the New World! what a task is thine! | 20 |
| To formulate the Modern.....Out of the peerless grandeur of the modern, | |
| Out of Thyself—comprising Science—to recast Poems, Churches, Art, | |
| (Recast—may-be discard them, end them—May-be their work is done—who knows?) | |
| By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead, | |
| To limn, with absolute faith, the mighty living present. | 25 |
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| (And yet, thou living, present brain! heir of the dead, the Old World brain! | |
| Thou that lay folded, like an unborn babe, within its folds so long! | |
| Thou carefully prepared by it so long!—haply thou but unfoldest it—only maturest it; | |
| It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain’d in thee; | |
| Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee, | 30 |
| The fruit of all the Old, ripening to-day in thee.) | |
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3
Sail—sail thy best, ship of Democracy! | |
| Of value is thy freight—’tis not the Present only, | |
| The Past is also stored in thee! | |
| Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone—not of thy western continent alone; | 35 |
| Earth’s résumé entire floats on thy keel, O ship—is steadied by thy spars; | |
| With thee Time voyages in trust—the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee; | |
| With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear’st the other continents; | |
| Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant: | |
| —Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O helmsman—thou carryest great companions, | 40 |
| Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee, | |
| And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee. | |
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4
Beautiful World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes, | |
| Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky; | |
| Emblem of general Maternity, lifted above all; | 45 |
| Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons; | |
| Out of thy teeming womb, thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, | |
| Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life; | |
| World of the Real! world of the twain in one! | |
| World of the Soul—born by the world of the real alone—led to identity, body, by it alone; | 50 |
| Yet in beginning only—incalculable masses of composite, precious materials, | |
| By history’s cycles forwarded—by every nation, language, hither sent, | |
| Ready, collected here—a freer, vast, electric World, to be constructed here, | |
| (The true New World—the world of orbic Science, Morals, Literatures to come,) | |
| Thou Wonder World, yet undefined, unform’d—neither do I define thee; | 55 |
| How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? | |
| I feel thy ominous greatness, evil as well as good; | |
| I watch thee, advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past; | |
| I see thy light lighting and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe; | |
| But I do not undertake to define thee—hardly to comprehend thee; | 60 |
| I but thee name—thee prophecy—as now! | |
| I merely thee ejaculate! | |
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| Thee in thy future; | |
| Thee in thy only permanent life, career—thy own unloosen’d mind—thy soaring spirit; | |
| Thee as another equally needed sun, America—radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all; | 65 |
| Thee! risen in thy potent cheerfulness and joy—thy endless, great hilarity! | |
| (Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long—that weigh’d so long upon the mind of man, | |
| The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man;) | |
| Thee in thy larger, saner breeds of Female, Male—thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East, | |
| (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son, endear’d alike, forever equal;) | 70 |
| Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain; | |
| Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest material wealth and civilization must remain in vain;) | |
| Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing Worship—thee in no single bible, saviour, merely, | |
| Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself—thy bibles incessant, within thyself, equal to any, divine as any; | |
| Thee in an education grown of thee—in teachers, studies, students, born of thee; | 75 |
| Thee in thy democratic fetes, en masse—thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers; | |
| Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed—the edifice on sure foundations tied,) | |
| Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought—thy topmost rational joys—thy love, and godlike aspiration, | |
| In thy resplendent coming literati—thy full-lung’d orators—thy sacerdotal bards—kosmic savans, | |
| These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophecy. | 80 |
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5
Land tolerating all—accepting all—not for the good alone—all good for thee; | |
| Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself; | |
| Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself. | |
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| (Lo! where arise three peerless stars, | |
| To be thy natal stars, my country—Ensemble—Evolution—Freedom, | 85 |
| Set in the sky of Law.) | |
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| Land of unprecedented faith—God’s faith! | |
| Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav’d; | |
| The general inner earth, so long, so sedulously draped over, now and hence for what it is, boldly laid bare, | |
| Open’d by thee to heaven’s light, for benefit or bale. | 90 |
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| Not for success alone; | |
| Not to fair-sail unintermitted always; | |
| The storm shall dash thy face—the murk of war, and worse than war, shall cover thee all over; | |
| (Wert capable of war—its tug and trials? Be capable of peace, its trials; | |
| For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in peace—not war;) | 95 |
| In many a smiling mask death shall approach, beguiling thee—thou in disease shalt swelter; | |
| The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within; | |
| Consumption of the worst—moral consumption—shall rouge thy face with hectic: | |
| But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, | |
| Whatever they are to-day, and whatever through time they may be, | 100 |
| They each and all shall lift, and pass away, and cease from thee; | |
| While thou, Time’s spirals rounding—out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, | |
| Equable, natural, mystical Union thou—(the mortal with immortal blent,) | |
| Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future—the spirit of the body and the mind, | |
| The Soul—its destinies. | 105 |
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| The Soul, its destinies—the real real, | |
| (Purport of all these apparitions of the real;) | |
| In thee, America, the Soul, its destinies; | |
| Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! | |
| By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d—(by these thyself solidifying;) | 110 |
| Thou mental, moral orb! thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! | |
| The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as thine—for such unparallel’d flight as thine, | |
| The Future only holds thee, and can hold thee. | |
