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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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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, |
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