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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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THE RETURN OF THE HEROES.
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FOR the lands and for these passionate days and for myself, |
Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields, |
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, |
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, |
O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice, |
O harvest of my lands—O boundless summer growths, |
O lavish brown parturient earth—O infinite teeming womb, |
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Is acted God's calm annual drama, |
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, |
Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, |
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong
waves,
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The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, |
The liliput countless armies of the grass, |
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, |
The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, |
The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and
the silvery fringes,
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The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, |
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, |
The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. |
3
Thou art all over set in births and joys! |
Thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-
garment,
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Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions, |
A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast
demesne,
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As some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou ridest into
port,
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As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so have
the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of thee;
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Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! |
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty, |
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns, |
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon
thy world, and lookest East and lookest West,
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Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million
farms, and missest nothing,
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Thou all-acceptress—thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as
God is hospitable.)
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4
When late I sang sad was my voice, |
Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred
and smoke of war;
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In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood, |
Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying. |
Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, |
Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle; |
No more the sad, unnatural shows of war. |
Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping
armies?
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Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow'd. |
(Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs, |
With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and
your muskets;
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How elate I stood and watch'd you, where starting off you
march'd.
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Pass—then rattle drums again, |
For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army, |
Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army, |
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your
fever,
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O my land's maim'd darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage
and the crutch,
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Lo, your pallid army follows.) |
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But on these days of brightness, |
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes,
the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
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Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature, |
They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass, |
And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin. |
Nor do I forget you Departed, |
Nor in winter or summer my lost ones, |
But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at
peace, like pleasing phantoms,
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Your memories rising glide silently by me. |
6
I saw the day the return of the heroes, |
(Yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return, |
Them that day I saw not.) |
I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies, |
I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions, |
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters
of mighty camps.
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No holiday soldiers—youthful, yet veterans, |
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and
workshop,
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Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march, |
Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field. |
A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait, |
The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn, |
They melt, they disappear. |
Exult O lands! victorious lands! |
Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields, |
But here and hence your victory. |
Melt, melt away ye armies—disperse ye blue-clad soldiers, |
Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms, |
Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, |
With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars. |
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Loud O my throat, and clear O soul! |
The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding, |
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. |
All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me, |
I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last, |
Man's innocent and strong arenas. |
I see the heroes at other toils, |
I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons. |
I see where the Mother of All, |
With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long, |
And counts the varied gathering of the products. |
Busy the far, the sunlit panorama, |
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, |
Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane, |
Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, |
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, |
And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook, |
And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes, |
And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring
grass.
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8
Toil on heroes! harvest the products! |
Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All, |
With dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you. |
Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well! |
The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you. |
Well-pleased America thou beholdest, |
Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters, |
The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements; |
Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the
revolving hay-rakes,
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The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines, |
The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well sepa-
rating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,
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Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the
rice-cleanser.
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Beneath thy look O Maternal, |
With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes
harvest.
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All gather and all harvest, |
Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in
security,
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Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace. |
Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy
great face only,
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Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spear
under thee,
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Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in
its light-green sheath,
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Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns, |
Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan,
to theirs;
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Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the
golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
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Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, |
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the
Borders,
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Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches
of grapes from the vines,
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Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South, |
Under the beaming sun and under thee. |
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