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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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SONG OF THE REDWOOD-TREE.
1
A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, |
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, |
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, |
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense. |
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Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters, |
My time has ended, my term has come. |
Along the northern coast, |
Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves, |
In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country, |
With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse, |
With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong
arms,
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Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood
forest dense,
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I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting. |
The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not, |
The quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard
not,
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As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to
join the refrain,
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But in my soul I plainly heard. |
Murmuring out of its myriad leaves, |
Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high, |
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark, |
That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only
but the future.
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And all you venerable and innocent joys, |
Perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a
summer sun,
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And the white snows and night and the wild winds; |
O the great patient rugged joys, my soul's strong joys unreck'd by
man,
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(For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness,
identity,
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And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,) |
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine, |
Our time, our term has come. |
Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers, |
We who have grandly fill'd our time; |
With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight, |
We welcome what we wrought for through the past, |
And leave the field for them. |
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For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time, |
For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings! |
In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta,
Nevadas,
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These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far
Yosemite,
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To be in them absorb'd, assimilated. |
Then to a loftier strain, |
Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant, |
As if the heirs, the deities of the West, |
Joining with master-tongue bore part. |
Not wan from Asia's fetiches, |
Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house, |
(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
scaffolds everywhere,)
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But come from Nature's long and harmless throes, peacefully
builded thence,
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These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore, |
To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new, |
You promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate. |
You occult deep volitions, |
You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself,
giving not taking law,
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You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life
and love and aught that comes from life and love,
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You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America,
(age upon age working in death the same as life,)
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You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and
mould the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,
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You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal'd but ever
alert,
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You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may-be uncon-
scious of yourselves,
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Unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface; |
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
statutes, literatures,
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Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,
lands of the Western shore,
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We pledge, we dedicate to you. |
For man of you, your characteristic race, |
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Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportion-
ate to Nature,
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Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or
roof,
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Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure, |
Here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others' formulas heed,)
here fill his time,
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To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last, |
Thus on the northern coast, |
In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the
music of choppers' axes,
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The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the
groan,
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Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic,
ancient and rustling,
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The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing, |
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving, |
From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah, |
To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding, |
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the
settlements, features all,
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In the Mendocino woods I caught. |
2
The flashing and golden pageant of California, |
The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands, |
The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south, |
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain
cliffs,
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The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic
chemistry,
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The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripen-
ing, the rich ores forming beneath;
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At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession, |
A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere, |
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to
the whole world,
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To India and China and Australia and the thousand island para-
dises of the Pacific,
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Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,
the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
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And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold. |
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3
But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore, |
(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,) |
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
till now deferr'd,
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Promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race. |
The new society at last, proportionate to Nature, |
In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees
imperial,
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In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even
vital air.
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Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared, |
I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal, |
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir
of the past so grand,
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To build a grander future. |
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