Our Old Feuillage

athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is; The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the States, each for itself⁠—the money-makers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars⁠—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, O lands! all so dear to me⁠—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is, Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida, Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running, Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants, Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement⁠—and I triumphantly twittering, The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time reliev’d by other sentinels⁠—and I feeding and taking turns with the rest, In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives⁠—and I, plunging at the hunters, corner’d and desperate, In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof⁠—and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands⁠—my body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united and made One identity ; Nativities, climates, the