It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present—it is this earth to-day;

It is in Democracy—in this America—the Old World also; It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day;

It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;

It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,

All for the average man of to-day.

YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED.

YEAR

YEARS of the unperformed! your horizon rises-I see it part away for more august dramas;

I see not America only—I see not only Liberty's nation, but other nations embattling;

I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combi

nations—I see the solidarity of races;

I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the

world's stage;

Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?

H

I see freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law by her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste;

—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly ap

proach?

I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions! I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies

broken;

I see the landmarks of European kings removed;

I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way;

Never were such sharp questions asked as this day; Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God.

Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest; His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonizes the Pacific, the archipelagoes;

With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war,

With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands;

What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of

you, passing under the seas?

Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?

Is humanity forming en masse ?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;

The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general

divine war;

No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill

the days and nights.

Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly

try to pierce it, is full of phantoms;

Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;

This incredible rush and heat—this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, O years!

Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!)

The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,

The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, ad

vance upon me.

FLUX.

F these years I sing,

OF

How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions;

How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the pro

mise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good;

How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infi

delity;

How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States —or see freedom or spirituality—or hold any faith in results.

But I see the athletes—and I see the results glorious and inevitable—and they again leading to other results ; How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them,

How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended. and things begun;

How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun;

And how the States are complete in themselves—And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward,

And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and

transitions,

And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too, serve― -and how every fact serves,

And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.

TO WORKING-MEN.

NOME closer to me;

COME

I.

Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess ; Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.

This is unfinished business with me—How is it with you? (I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)

Male and Female!

I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.

American masses!

I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me—I know that it is good for you to

do so.

2.

This is the poem of occupations;