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Always our old feuillage!
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Always Florida's green peninsula—always the priceless delta of
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Louisiana—always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,
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Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver
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mountains of New Mexico—always soft-breath'd Cuba,
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Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern sea, inseparable with
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the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western seas,
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The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and a half
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millions of square miles,
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The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main,
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the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
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The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of dwellings—
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always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches,
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Always the free range and diversity—always the continent of Democracy;
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Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers,
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Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing
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Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing density there,
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the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
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All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
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All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
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Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering,
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On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats
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Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys
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of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke
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In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the
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hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink,
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In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the
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water rocking silently,
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In farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done, they
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rest standing, they are too tired,
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Afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around,
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The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd, the farthest polar
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sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes,
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White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,
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On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together,
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In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the
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wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk,
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In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer
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visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming,
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In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black
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buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops,
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Below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and
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cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat,
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Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites with
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color'd flowers and berries enveloping huge trees,
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The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,
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noiselessly waved by the wind,
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The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and
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the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
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Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding
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The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees,
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the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising;
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Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North
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Carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the
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large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work'd by horses, the
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clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
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Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the
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incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,
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There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all
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directions is cover'd with pine straw;
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In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge,
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by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking,
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In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence,
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joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,
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On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under
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shelter of high banks,
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Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle,
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others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking;
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Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing
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in the Great Dismal Swamp,
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There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous
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moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;
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Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an
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excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all
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bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
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Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep,
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(how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!)
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The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the
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Mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;
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California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume,
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the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the graves one
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in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;
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Down in Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving
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mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks
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Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American Soul, with
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equal hemispheres, one Love, one Dilation or Pride;
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In arriere the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines, the
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calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,
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The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward
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The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural
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The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
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The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter
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All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,
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reminiscences, institutions,
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All these States compact, every square mile of these States without
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excepting a particle;
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Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields,
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Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies
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shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air,
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The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler
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southward but returning northward early in the spring,
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The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows and
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shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside,
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The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New
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Orleans, San Francisco,
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The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
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Evening—me in my room—the setting sun,
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The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the
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swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre
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of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift
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shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is;
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The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners,
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Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the
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individuality of the States, each for itself—the moneymakers,
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Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,
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pulley, all certainties,
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The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
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In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm
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earth, the lands, my lands,
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O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it
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at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is,
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Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the
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myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,
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Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande,
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the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the
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Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing
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and skipping and running,
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Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with
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parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and
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Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing
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the crow with its bill, for amusement—and I triumphantly twittering,
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The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
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themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside
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move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time
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reliev'd by other sentinels—and I feeding and taking turns
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In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner'd by hunters,
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rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his
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fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—and I, plunging at the
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hunters, corner'd and desperate,
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In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the
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countless workmen working in the shops,
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And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself
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than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
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Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no more
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inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand
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diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands
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are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY;
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Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,
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Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me,
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These affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me
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and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union
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of them, to afford the like to you?
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Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you
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also be eligible as I am?
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How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect
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