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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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BIRDS OF PASSAGE.
SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL.
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, |
In this broad earth of ours, |
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, |
Enclosed and safe within its central heart, |
Nestles the seed perfection. |
By every life a share or more or less, |
None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is
waiting.
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Lo! keen-eyed towering science, |
As from tall peaks the modern overlooking, |
Successive absolute fiats issuing. |
Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science, |
For it has history gather'd like husks around the globe, |
For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky. |
In spiral routes by long detours, |
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,) |
For it the partial to the permanent flowing, |
For it the real to the ideal tends. |
For it the mystic evolution, |
Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified. |
Forth from their masks, no matter what, |
From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears, |
Health to emerge and joy, joy universal. |
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, |
Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and
states,
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Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, |
Only the good is universal. |
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Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, |
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, |
High in the purer, happier air. |
From imperfection's murkiest cloud, |
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, |
One flash of heaven's glory. |
To fashion's, custom's discord, |
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, |
Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, |
From some far shore the final chorus sounding. |
O the blest eyes, the happy hearts, |
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine, |
Along the mighty labyrinth. |
For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality, |
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. |
Thou too surroundest all, |
Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad
and new,
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The measur'd faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, |
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, |
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all, |
All, all for immortality, |
Love like the light silently wrapping all, |
Nature's amelioration blessing all, |
The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, |
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening. |
Give me O God to sing that thought, |
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, |
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us, |
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, |
Health, peace, salvation universal. |
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Nay but the lack of it the dream, |
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, |
And all the world a dream. |
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
COME my tan-faced children, |
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, |
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? |
>For we cannot tarry here, |
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, |
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, |
O you youths, Western youths, |
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, |
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the fore-
most
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Have the elder races halted? |
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond
the seas?
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We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, |
All the past we leave behind, |
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, |
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, |
We detachments steady throwing, |
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, |
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, |
We primeval forests felling, |
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines
within,
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We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, |
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From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high
plateaus,
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From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, |
From Nebraska, from Arkansas, |
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein'd,
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All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the
Northern,
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O resistless restless race! |
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! |
O Imourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, |
Raise the mighty mother mistress, |
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
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Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd
mistress,
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See my children, resolute children, |
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, |
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, |
On and on the compact ranks, |
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly
fill'd,
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Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, |
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? |
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd, |
All the pulses of the world, |
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat, |
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, |
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Life's involv'd and varied pageants, |
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, |
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, |
All the hapless silent lovers, |
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, |
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, |
I too with my soul and body, |
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, |
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions
pressing,
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Lo, the darting bowling orb! |
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, |
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, |
These are of us, they are with us, |
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo
wait behind,
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We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, |
O you daughters of the West! |
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives! |
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, |
Minstrels latent on the prairies! |
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done
your work,)
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Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, |
Not for delectations sweet, |
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, |
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, |
Do the feasters gluttonous feast? |
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors? |
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, |
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Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
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Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, |
Till with sound of trumpet, |
Far, far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I hear
it wind,
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Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places, |
TO YOU.
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, |
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet
and hands,
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Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
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Your true soul and body appear before me, |
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
suffering, dying.
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Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my
poem,
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I whisper with my lips close to your ear, |
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than
you.
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O I have been dilatory and dumb, |
I should have made my way straight to you long ago, |
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted
nothing but you.
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I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, |
None has understood you, but I understand you, |
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to your-
self,
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None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in
you,
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None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never
consent to subordinate you,
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I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
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Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure
of all,
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From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-
color'd light,
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But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nim-
bus of gold-color'd light,
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From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
effulgently flowing forever.
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O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! |
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon
yourself all your life,
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Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, |
What you have done returns already in mockeries, |
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mock-
eries, what is their return?)
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The mockeries are not you, |
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, |
I pursue you where none else has pursued you, |
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd
routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself,
they do not conceal you from me,
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The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
balk others they do not balk me,
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The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, pre-
mature death, all these I part aside.
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There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in
you,
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There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in
you,
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No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, |
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. |
As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like care-
fully to you,
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I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I
sing the songs of the glory of you.
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Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! |
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, |
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are
immense and interminable as they,
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These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of appar-
ent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress
over them,
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Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.
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The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency, |
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself,
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Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
is scanted,
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Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
picks its way.
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FRANCE,
The 18th Year of these States.
A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the
mother's heart closer than any yet.
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I walk'd the shores of my Eastern sea, |
Heard over the waves the little voice, |
Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the
roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings,
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Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from
the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne
away in the tumbrils,
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Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock'd
at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
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Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribu-
tion?
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Could I wish humanity different? |
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? |
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? |
O Liberty! O mate for me! |
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to
fetch them out in case of need,
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Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd, |
Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic, |
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance. |
Hence I sign this salute over the sea, |
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, |
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But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with
perfect trust, no matter how long,
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And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath'd cause,
as for all lands,
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And I send these words to Paris with my love, |
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them, |
For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it, |
O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be
drowning all that would interrupt them,
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O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march, |
It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness, |
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it, |
I will yet sing a song for you ma femme. |
MYSELF AND MINE.
MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever, |
To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a
boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,
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To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common
people,
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And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea. |
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,) |
But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women. |
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking
and talking.
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Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws, |
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up
agitation and conflict,
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I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was
thought most worthy.
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(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life? |
Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all
your life?
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And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages,
reminiscences,
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Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a
single word?)
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Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens, |
I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern
continually.
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I give nothing as duties, |
What others give as duties I give as living impulses, |
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?) |
Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse
unanswerable questions,
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Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? |
What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender
directions and indirections?
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I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but
listen to my enemies, as I myself do,
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I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I
cannot expound myself,
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I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, |
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. |
O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long, |
I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a
steady grower,
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Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries. |
I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth, |
I perceive I have no time to lose. |
YEAR OF METEORS.
(1859–60.)
YEAR of meteors! brooding year! |
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, |
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad, |
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the
scaffold in Virginia,
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(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd, |
I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but
trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted
the scaffold;)
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I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States, |
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships
and their cargoes,
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The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with
immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,
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Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I
welcome give,
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And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me,
young prince of England!
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(Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with
your cortege of nobles?
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There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;) |
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my
bay,
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Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she
was 600 feet long,
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Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget
not to sing;
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Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in
heaven,
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Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shoot-
ing over our heads,
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(A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light
over our heads,
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Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) |
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would
I gleam and patch these chants,
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Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—year of
forebodings!
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Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—lo! even here
one equally transient and strange!
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As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this
chant,
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What am I myself but one of your meteors? |
WITH ANTECEDENTS.
With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past
ages,
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With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I
am,
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With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, |
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon, |
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With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and jour-
neys,
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With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, |
With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the
crusader, and the monk,
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With those old continents whence we have come to this new
continent,
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With the fading kingdoms and kings over there, |
With the fading religions and priests, |
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and
present shores,
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With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at
these years,
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You and me arrived—America arrived and making this year, |
This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come. |
O but it is not the years—it is I, it is You, |
We touch all laws and tally all antecedents, |
We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily
include them and more,
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We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil
and good,
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All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light, |
The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, |
Its sun, and its again, all swing around us. |
As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,) |
I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all, |
I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no
part.
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(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past? |
Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recogni-
tion.)
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I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews, |
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, |
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without
exception,
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I assert that all past days were what they must have been, |
And that they could no-how have been better than they were, |
And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is, |
And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they
are.
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In the name of these States and in your and my name, the
Past,
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And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the
Present time.
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I know that the past was great and the future will be great, |
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, |
(For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man's sake, your
sake if you are he,)
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And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the
centre of all days, all races,
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And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races
and days, or ever will come.
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