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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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THOUGHTS.
1
How they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as through
parturitions,
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How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the
sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people—
illustrates evil as well as good,
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The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self; |
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste,
myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,
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How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States,
or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results,
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(But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious
and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.)
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How the great cities appear—how the Democratic masses, turbu-
lent, wilful, as I love them,
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How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the
sounding and resounding, keep on and on,
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How society waits unform'd, and is for a while between things
ended and things begun,
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How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of
freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of so-
ciety, and of all that is begun,
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And how the States are complete in themselves—and how all
triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead
onward,
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And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be con-
vuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions,
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And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses
too, serve—and how every fact, and war itself, with all its
horrors, serves,
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And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition
of death.
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2
Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births, |
Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to im-
pregnable and swarming places,
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Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be, |
Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado,
Nevada, and the rest,
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(Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,) |
View Page 374
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Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for—and of
what all sights, North, South, East and West, are,
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Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the
unnamed lost ever present in my mind;
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Of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake, |
Of the present, passing, departing—of the growth of completer
men than any yet,
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Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother,
the Mississippi flows,
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Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected, |
Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of
inalienable homesteads,
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Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and
sweet blood,
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Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there, |
Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the
Anahuacs,
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Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,) |
Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there, |
(O it lurks in me night and day—what is gain after all to savage-
ness and freedom?)
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