Farewell dear mate, dear love!

I’m going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,

So Good-bye my Fancy.

/

Now for my last—let me look back a moment;

The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,

Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

/

Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;

Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.

/

Yet let me not be too hasty,

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended into one;

Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)

If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,

May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,

Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.

He slowly rais’d himself from the bed on the floor,

Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist,

Call’d for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,)

Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands.

Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting a moment,

Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all,

Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,)

Fix’d his look on wife and little children—the last:

(And here a line in memory of his name and death.)

Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,

Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing

Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;

Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art,

(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest—and this is of them,)

So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on my face and hands,

Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,

(Distances balk’d—occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)

I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes,

I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space;

Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless store, God-sent,

(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)

Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell,

Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all Astronomy’s last refinement?

Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?

O’er city, passion, sea—o’er prairie, mountain, wood—the earth itself;

The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight,

Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;

The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad:

So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan,

Bro’t out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before;

The lights indeed from them—old age’s lambent peaks.

Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night,

To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;

Yonnondio—I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark,

I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors,

As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight,

(Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls!

No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)

Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn’d they disappear;

To-day gives place, and fades—the cities, farms, factories fade;

A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment,

Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,

Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,

(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)

Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,

Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,

Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos’d hurricanes,

Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all eternity in thy content,

(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest—no less could make thee,)

Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet never gain’st,

Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent,

Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,

By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,

And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,

And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,

And undertones of distant lion roar,

(Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear—but now, rapport for once,

A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)

The first and last confession of the globe,

Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,

The tale of cosmic elemental passion,

Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,

A rocky founded island—shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves.

Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,

To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,

To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,

(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,

I sit by the form in the coffin,

I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;)

To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best,

I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,

And set a tombstone here.

Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,

Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,

Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,

Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,

Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,

Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,

Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,

The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,

Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,

Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,

Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;

Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,

For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,

With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,

By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,

By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

/

Fierce-throated beauty!

Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,

Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earth-quake, rousing all,

Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,

(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)

Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,

Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,

To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

THOU Mother with thy equal brood,

Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,

A special song before I go I’d sing o’er all the rest,

For thee, the future.

/

I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,

I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,

I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish’d.

/

The paths to the house I seek to make,

But leave to those to come the house itself.

/

Belief I sing, and preparation;

As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,

But greater still from what is yet to come,

Out of that formula for thee I sing.

2

As a strong bird on pinions free,

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,

Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.

/

The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,

Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,

Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library;

But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois prairie,

With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or Florida’s glades,

Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,

With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,

And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound,

That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

/

And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,

Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,

Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou transcendental Union!

By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,

Thought of man justified, blended with God,

Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!

Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!

3

Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

To formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,

Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,

(Recast, may-be discard them, end them—may-be their work is done, who knows?)

By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead,

To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

/

And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain,

Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long,

Thou carefully prepared by it so long—haply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it,

It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain’d in thee,

Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee;

Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,

The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.

4

Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,

Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the Present only,

The Past is also stored in thee,

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western continent alone,

Earth’s résumé entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,

With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear’st the other continents,

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;

Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou carriest great companions,

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.

5

Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,

Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,

Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,

Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,

Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing,

Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life,

World of the real—world of the twain in one,

World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone,

Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials,

By history’s cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent,

Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here,

(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come,)

Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform’d, neither do I define thee,

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,

I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past,

I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe,

But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee,

I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now,

I merely thee ejaculate!

/

Thee in thy future,

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen’d mind, thy soaring spirit,

Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all,

Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity,

Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh’d so long upon the mind of man,

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man;

Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male—thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,

(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son, endear’d alike, forever equal,)

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain,

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest material civilization must remain in vain,)

Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship—thee in no single bible, saviour, merely,

Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any,

(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century’s visible growth,

But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!)

Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students, born of thee,

Thee in thy democratic fêtes en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers,

Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied,)

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration,

In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung’d orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans,

These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy.

6

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee,

Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,

Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,

To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution, Freedom,

Set in the sky of Law.)

Land of unprecedented faith, God’s faith,

Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav’d,

The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over, now hence for what it is boldly laid bare,

Open’d by thee to heaven’s light for benefit or bale.

Not for success alone,

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always,

The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over,

(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials,

For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not war;)

In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter,

The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,

Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic,

But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all,

Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,

They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,

While thou, Time’s spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing,

Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with immortal blent,)

Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind,

The soul, its destinies.

/

The soul, its destinies, the real real,

(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)

In thee America, the soul, its destinies,

Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!

By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d, (by these thyself solidifying,)

Thou mental, moral orb—thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!

The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as thine,

For such unparallel’d flight as thine, such brood as thine,

The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.