Published Works

Books by Whitman

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [begin page 298] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD.

TO the leaven'd soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the
last;

(Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead,

But forth from my tent emerging for good—loosing,
untying the tent-ropes;)

In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching
circuits and vistas, again to peace restored,

To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas
beyond—to the south and the north;

To the leaven'd soil of the general western world, to
attest my songs,

(To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of
war and peace,)

To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,

To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the
woods,

To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie
spreading wide,

To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane
impalpable air;

…And responding, they answer all, (but not in words,)

The average earth, the witness of war and peace,
acknowledges mutely;

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 ripen my songs.

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.