How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!) How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches and leaves! (Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)
O amazement of things—even the least particle! O spirituality of things! O strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching me and America! I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
I too carol the sun, usher’d or at noon, or as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I steam’d down the Mississippi, As I wander’d over the prairies, As I have lived, as I have look’d through my windows my eyes, As I went forth in the morning, as I beheld the light breaking in the east, As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea, As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam’d, Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
I sing to the last the equalities modern or old, I sing the endless finalès of things, I say Nature continues, glory continues, I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come, I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.
As at Thy Portals Also Death
As at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,