and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds

of buffalo, feeding on short curly grass;

See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless

vehicles, and commerce;

See the many-cylindered steam printing-press—See the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan ;

See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching—pulses of Europe, duly returned;

See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle;

See ploughmen, ploughing farms—See miners, digging mines—See the numberless factories;

See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! read the hints come at last.

20.

O Camerado close!

you and me at last—and us two only.

O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!

O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!

O now I triumph—and you shall also;

O hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more desirer and lover!

O to haste, firm holding—to haste, haste on, with me.

AMERICAN FEUILLAGE.

A

MERICA always!

Always our own feuillage!

Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!

Always California's golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always softbreathed Cuba!

Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea— inseparable with the slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas!

The area the eighty-third year of these States*—the three and a half millions of square miles;

The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,

* 1858-9.

The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always these, and more,

branching forth into numberless branches;

Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy!

Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada, the snows;

Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons — the increasing density there—the habitans, friendly,

threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;

All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,

All characters, movements, growths-a few noticed, myriads unnoticed.

Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things

gathering.

On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up;

Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware;

In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;

In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently;

In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour

done they rest standing—they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around;

The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond

the floes;

White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes.

On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike

midnight together;

In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk ;

In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming;

In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree tops,

Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat;

Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees,

The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind;

The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark — the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites

and negroes,

Thirty or forty great wagons- the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs,

The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising;

Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on shore worked by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing houses;

Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees—There are the turpentine works,

There are the negroes at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is covered with pine straw.

—In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coatings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the cornshucking;

In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged

mulatto nurse.

On rivers, boatmen safely moored at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks,