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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD.
TO the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last, |
(Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-
ropes,)
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In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and
vistas again to peace restored,
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To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the
South and the North,
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To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest my
songs,
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To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi, |
To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, |
To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading
wide,
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View Page 255
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To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable
air;
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And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) |
The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges
mutely,
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The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, |
The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end, |
But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs. |
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