Walt Whitman: Verses about Forest

A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky--farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term has come.


Along the northern coast,
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves, 10
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino country,
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse,
With crackling blows of axes, sounding musically, driven by strong
arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes--there in the Redwood
forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

The choppers heard not--the camp shanties echoed not;
The quick-ear'd teamsters, and chain and jack-screw men, heard not,
As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years, to
join the refrain;
But in my soul I plainly heard.

Murmuring out of its myriad leaves, 20
Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high,
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs--out of its foot-thick bark,
That chant of the seasons and time--chant, not of the past only, but
the future.


You untold life of me,
And all you venerable and innocent joys,
Perennial, hardy life of me, with joys, 'mid rain, and many a summer
sun,
And the white snows, and night, and the wild winds;
O the great patient, rugged joys! my soul's strong joys, unreck'd by
man;
(For know I bear the soul befitting me--I too have consciousness,
identity,
And all the rocks and mountains have--and all the earth;) 30
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
Our time, our term has come.

Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers,
We who have grandly fill'd our time;
With Nature's calm content, and tacit, huge delight,
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
And leave the field for them.

For them predicted long,
For a superber Race--they too to grandly fill their time,
For them we abdicate--in them ourselves, ye forest kings! 40
In them these skies and airs--these mountain peaks--Shasta--Nevadas,
These huge, precipitous cliffs--this amplitude--these valleys grand--
Yosemite,
To be in them absorb'd, assimilated.


Then to a loftier strain,
Still prouder, more ecstatic, rose the chant,
As if the heirs, the Deities of the West,
Joining, with master-tongue, bore part.

Not wan from Asia's fetishes,
Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house,
(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
scaffolds every where,) 50
But come from Nature's long and harmless throes--peacefully builded
thence,
These virgin lands--Lands of the Western Shore,
To the new Culminating Man--to you, the Empire New,
You, promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.

You occult, deep volitions,
You average Spiritual Manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself--
giving, not taking law,
You Womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and
love, and aught that comes from life and love,
You unseen Moral Essence of all the vast materials of America, (age
upon age, working in Death the same as Life,)
You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould
the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,
You hidden National Will, lying in your abysms, conceal'd, but ever
alert, 60
You past and present purposes, tenaciously pursued, may-be
unconscious of yourselves,
Unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
statutes, literatures,
Here build your homes for good--establish here--These areas entire,
Lands of the Western Shore,
We pledge, we dedicate to you.

For man of you--your characteristic Race,
Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow--here tower, proportionate to
Nature,
Here climb the vast, pure spaces, unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or
roof,
Here laugh with storm or sun--here joy--here patiently inure,
Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others' formulas heed)--here
fill his time, 70
To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last,
To disappear, to serve.

Thus, on the northern coast,
In the echo of teamsters' calls, and the clinking chains, and the
music of choppers' axes,
The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the
groan,
Such words combined from the Redwood-tree--as of wood-spirits' voices
ecstatic, ancient and rustling,
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
From the Cascade range to the Wasatch--or Idaho far, or Utah,
To the deities of the Modern henceforth yielding, 80
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity--the
settlements, features all,
In the Mendocino woods I caught.


The flashing and golden pageant of California!
The sudden and gorgeous drama--the sunny and ample lands;
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado south;
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air--valleys and mountain
cliffs;
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow--the silent, cyclic
chemistry;
The slow and steady ages plodding--the unoccupied surface ripening--
the rich ores forming beneath;
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy race settling and organizing every where;
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the
whole world, 90
To India and China and Australia, and the thousand island paradises
of the Pacific;
Populous cities--the latest inventions--the steamers on the rivers--
the railroads--with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
And wool, and wheat, and the grape--and diggings of yellow gold.


But more in you than these, Lands of the Western Shore!
(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
till now deferr'd,
Promis'd, to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the Race.

The New Society at last, proportionate to Nature,
In Man of you, more than your mountain peaks, or stalwart trees
imperial, 100
In Woman more, far more, than all your gold, or vines, or even vital
air.

Fresh come, to a New World indeed, yet long prepared,
I see the Genius of the Modern, child of the Real and Ideal,
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of the
past so grand,
To build a grander future.

PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient!
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;
You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry! 10
Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls!
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber--Why have you seiz'd me?


Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;
Listen--lose not--it is toward thee they tend;
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
For thee they sing and dance, O Soul.

A festival song!
The duet of the bridegroom and the bride--a marriage-march,
With lips of love, and hearts of lovers, fill'd to the brim with
love; 20
The red-flush'd cheeks, and perfumes--the cortege swarming, full of
friendly faces, young and old,
To flutes' clear notes, and sounding harps' cantabile.


Now loud approaching drums!
Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?
the rout of the baffled?
Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

(Ah, Soul, the sobs of women--the wounded groaning in agony,
The hiss and crackle of flames--the blacken'd ruins--the embers of
cities,
The dirge and desolation of mankind.)


Now airs antique and medieval fill me!
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals: 30
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love,
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages.


Now the great organ sounds,
Tremulous--while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,
On which arising, rest, and leaping forth, depend,
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength--all hues we know,
Green blades of grass, and warbling birds--children that gambol and
play--the clouds of heaven above,)
The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,
Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest--maternity of all the rest;
And with it every instrument in multitudes, 40
The players playing--all the world's musicians,
The solemn hymns and masses, rousing adoration,
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,
And for their solvent setting, Earth's own diapason,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves;
A new composite orchestra--binder of years and climes--ten-fold
renewer,
As of the far-back days the poets tell--the Paradiso,
The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,
The journey done, the Journeyman come home, 50
And Man and Art, with Nature fused again.


Tutti! for Earth and Heaven!
The Almighty Leader now for me, for once has signal'd with his wand.

The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,
And all the wives responding.

The tongues of violins!
(I think, O tongues, ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself;
This brooding, yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)


Ah, from a little child,
Thou knowest, Soul, how to me all sounds became music; 60
My mother's voice, in lullaby or hymn;
(The voice--O tender voices--memory's loving voices!
Last miracle of all--O dearest mother's, sister's, voices;)
The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav'd corn,
The measur'd sea-surf, beating on the sand,
The twittering bird, the hawk's sharp scream,
The wild-fowl's notes at night, as flying low, migrating north or
south,
The psalm in the country church, or mid the clustering trees, the
open air camp-meeting,
The fiddler in the tavern--the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep--the crowing cock at dawn. 70


All songs of current lands come sounding 'round me,
The German airs of friendship, wine and love,
Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances--English warbles,
Chansons of France, Scotch tunes--and o'er the rest,
Italia's peerless compositions.

Across the stage, with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion,
Stalks Norma, brandishing the dagger in her hand.

I see poor crazed Lucia's eyes' unnatural gleam;
Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevell'd.

I see where Ernani, walking the bridal garden, 80
Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the
hand,
Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn.

To crossing swords, and grey hairs bared to heaven,
The clear, electric base and baritone of the world,
The trombone duo--Libertad forever!

From Spanish chestnut trees' dense shade,
By old and heavy convent walls, a wailing song,
Song of lost love--the torch of youth and life quench'd in despair,
Song of the dying swan--Fernando's heart is breaking.

Awaking from her woes at last, retriev'd Amina sings; 90
Copious as stars, and glad as morning light, the torrents of her joy.

(The teeming lady comes!
The lustrious orb--Venus contralto--the blooming mother,
Sister of loftiest gods--Alboni's self I hear.)


I hear those odes, symphonies, operas;
I hear in the William Tell, the music of an arous'd and angry people;
I hear Meyerbeer's Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert;
Gounod's Faust, or Mozart's Don Juan.


I hear the dance-music of all nations,
The waltz, (some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in
bliss;) 100
The bolero, to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets.

I see religious dances old and new,
I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre,
I see the Crusaders marching, bearing the cross on high, to the
martial clang of cymbals;
I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers'd with frantic
shouts, as they spin around, turning always towards Mecca;
I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs;
Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing,
I hear them clapping their hands, as they bend their bodies,
I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet.

I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers wounding
each other; 110
I see the Roman youth, to the shrill sound of flageolets, throwing
and catching their weapons,
As they fall on their knees, and rise again.

I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling;
I see the worshippers within, (nor form, nor sermon, argument, nor
word,
But silent, strange, devout--rais'd, glowing heads--extatic faces.)


I hear the Egyptian harp of many strings,
The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen;
The sacred imperial hymns of China,
To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone;)
Or to Hindu flutes, and the fretting twang of the vina, 120
A band of bayaderes.


Now Asia, Africa leave me--Europe, seizing, inflates me;
To organs huge, and bands, I hear as from vast concourses of voices,
Luther's strong hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott;
Rossini's Stabat Mater dolorosa;
Or, floating in some high cathedral dim, with gorgeous color'd
windows,
The passionate Agnus Dei, or Gloria in Excelsis.


Composers! mighty maestros!
And you, sweet singers of old lands--Soprani! Tenori! Bassi!
To you a new bard, carolling free in the west,
Obeisant, sends his love. 130

(Such led to thee, O Soul!
All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee,
But now, it seems to me, sound leads o'er all the rest.)


I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul's Cathedral;
Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies,
oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn;
The Creation, in billows of godhood laves me.

Give me to hold all sounds, (I, madly struggling, cry,)
Fill me with all the voices of the universe,
Endow me with their throbbings--Nature's also,
The tempests, waters, winds--operas and chants--marches and
dances, 140
Utter--pour in--for I would take them all.


Then I woke softly,
And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream,
And questioning all those reminiscences--the tempest in its fury,
And all the songs of sopranos and tenors,
And those rapt oriental dances, of religious fervor,
And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs,
And all the artless plaints of love, and grief and death,
I said to my silent, curious Soul, out of the bed of the slumber-
chamber,
Come, for I have found the clue I sought so long, 150
Let us go forth refresh'd amid the day,
Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,
Nourish'd henceforth by our celestial dream.

And I said, moreover,
Haply, what thou hast heard, O Soul, was not the sound of winds,
Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk's flapping wings, nor harsh
scream,
Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy,
Nor German organ majestic--nor vast concourse of voices--nor layers
of harmonies;
Nor strophes of husbands and wives--nor sound of marching soldiers,
Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps; 160
But, to a new rhythmus fitted for thee,
Poems, bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night
air, uncaught, unwritten,
Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write.

WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan!
Head from the mother's bowels drawn!
Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed
sown!
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean'd, and to lean on.

Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes--masculine trades,
sights and sounds;
Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music;
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great
organ.


Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind; 10
Welcome are lands of pine and oak;
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig;
Welcome are lands of gold;
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize--welcome those of the grape;
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;
Welcome the cotton-lands--welcome those of the white potato and sweet
potato;
Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies;
Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings;
Welcome the measureless grazing-lands--welcome the teeming soil of
orchards, flax, honey, hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands; 20
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands;
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores;
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc;
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!


The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd for a
garden,
The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is
lull'd,
The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam ends,
and the cutting away of masts;
The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion'd houses and
barns; 30
The remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,
families, goods,
The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it--the outset
anywhere,
The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimm'd
faces,
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on
themselves,
The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless
impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the
solidification; 40
The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and
sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of
snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural
life of the woods, the strong day's work,
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the
bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin;
--The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them
regular,
Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises, according as they
were prepared,
The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their
curv'd limbs,
Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by
posts and braces, 50
The hook'd arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nail'd,
Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
The echoes resounding through the vacant building;
The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way,
The six framing-men, two in the middle, and two at each end,
carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-
beam,
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly
laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the
trowels striking the bricks,
The bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place,
and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,
The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the
steady replenishing by the hod-men; 60
--Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown
apprentices,
The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward
the shape of a mast,
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,
The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,
The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;
The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays
against the sea;
--The city fireman--the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-
pack'd square,
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and
daring,
The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,
the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets--the bringing to bear of the
hooks and ladders, and their execution, 70
The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors, if
the fire smoulders under them,
The crowd with their lit faces, watching--the glare and dense
shadows;
--The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him,
The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the
edge with his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle, and sets it firmly in the
socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The Roman lictors preceding the consuls, 80
The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe
thither,
The siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty,
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce
and parley;
The sack of an old city in its time,
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and
disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the
gripe of brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons
despairing, 90
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust,
The power of personality, just or unjust.


Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures? 100
Do you think the great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the
best-built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering,
forts, armaments?

Away! These are not to be cherish'd for themselves;
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them;
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the
whole world.


The place where the great city stands is not the place of stretch'd
wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce, 110
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new comers, or the anchor-
lifters of the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops
selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools--nor the place where
money is plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.

Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards;
Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in
return, and understands them;
Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words and
deeds;
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place;
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases; 120
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of
elected persons;
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of
death pours its sweeping and unript waves;
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside
authority;
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal--and President, Mayor,
Governor, and what not, are agents for pay;
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
themselves;
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs;
Where speculations on the Soul are encouraged;
Where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as
the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the
men;
Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands; 130
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands;
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands;
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
There the great city stands.


How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's
or woman's look!

All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the
universe;
When he or she appears, materials are overaw'd,
The dispute on the Soul stops, 140
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn'd back, or laid
away.

What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
What is your respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books,
now?
Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the Soul now?


A sterile landscape covers the ore--there is as good as the best, for
all the forbidding appearance;
There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd; the hammers-men
are at hand with their tongs and hammers;
What always served, and always serves, is at hand. 150

Than this, nothing has better served--it has served all:
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the
Greek:
Served in building the buildings that last longer than any;
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi--served those whose relics
remain in Central America;
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and
the druids;
Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover'd
hills of Scandinavia;
Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough
sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves;
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths--served the pastoral
tribes and nomads;
Served the long, long distant Kelt--served the hardy pirates of the
Baltic; 160
Served before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of
Ethiopia;
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the
making of those for war;
Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea;
For the mediæval ages, and before the mediæval ages;
Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.


I see the European headsman;
He stands mask'd, clothed in red, with huge legs, and strong naked
arms,
And leans on a ponderous axe.

(Whom have you slaughter'd lately, European headsman?
Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?) 170

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers, rejected
kings,
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.

I see those who in any land have died for the good cause;
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out;
(Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)

I see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe;
Both blade and helve are clean;
They spirt no more the blood of European nobles--they clasp no more
the necks of queens. 180

I see the headsman withdraw and become useless;
I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy--I see no longer any axe upon
it;
I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race--the
newest, largest race.


(America! I do not vaunt my love for you;
I have what I have.)

The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid utterances;
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, 190
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string'd instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor
or sick,
Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.

The shapes arise! 200
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that
neighbors them,
Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or
Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains, or by the little
lakes, or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande--friendly
gatherings, the characters and fun,
Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river--dwellers
on coasts and off coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the
ice.

The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets;
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders,
arches; 210
Shapes of the fleets of barges, towns, lake and canal craft, river
craft.

The shapes arise!
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in
many a bay and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-
roots for knees,
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
workmen busy outside and inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,
bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.


The shapes arise!
The shape measur'd, saw'd, jack'd, join'd, stain'd,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud;
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of
the bride's bed; 220
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the
shape of the babe's cradle;
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet;
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly
parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman--
the roof over the well-married young man and woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cook'd by the chaste wife, and
joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's
work.

The shapes arise!
The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him or
her seated in the place;
The shape of the liquor-bar lean'd against by the young rum-drinker
and the old rum-drinker;
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod by sneaking footsteps;
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome
couple; 230
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and
losings;
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion'd arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp'd
crowd, the dangling of the rope.

The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances;
The door passing the dissever'd friend, flush'd and in haste;
The door that admits good news and bad news;
The door whence the son left home, confident and puff'd up;
The door he enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence,
diseas'd, broken down, without innocence, without means.


Her shape arises, 240
She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
The gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her gross and
soil'd;
She knows the thoughts as she passes--nothing is conceal'd from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;
She is the best belov'd--it is without exception--she has no reason
to fear, and she does not fear;
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her
as she passes;
She is silent--she is possess'd of herself--they do not offend her;
She receives them as the laws of nature receive them--she is strong,
She too is a law of nature--there is no law stronger than she is.


The main shapes arise! 250
Shapes of Democracy, total--result of centuries;
Shapes, ever projecting other shapes;
Shapes of turbulent manly cities;
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole earth.