Part 11 (1/2)

I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

TO THEE OLD CAUSE

To thee old cause!

Thou peerless, pa.s.sionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee), These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.

(A war O soldiers not for itself alone, Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)

Thou orb of many orbs!

Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!

Around the idea of thee the war revolving, With all its angry and vehement play of causes (With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years), These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one, Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee, As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself, Around the idea of thee.

FOR YOU O DEMOCRACY

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companions.h.i.+p thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the sh.o.r.es of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD

1

Thou Mother with thy equal brood, Thou varied chain of different States, yet one ident.i.ty 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 s.p.a.ces 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 cla.s.sics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library; But an odour 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!