The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman Part 12

What best I see in thee Is not that where thou mov'st down history's great highways, Ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike victory's dazzle,

Or that thou sat'st where Was.h.i.+ngton sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm'd upon Who walk'd with kings with even pace the round world's promenade; But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front, Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world's promenade, Were all so justified.

AS I WALK THESE BROAD MAJESTIC DAYS

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace (For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific Ideal, Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Longer campaigns and crises, labours beyond all others), Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce, The announcements of recognized things, science, The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the s.h.i.+ps (they will last a few years), The vast factories with their foremen and workmen, And hear the indors.e.m.e.nt of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things, Science, s.h.i.+ps, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight, They stand for realities--all is as it should be.

Then my realities; What else is so real as mine?

Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

THE UNITED STATES TO OLD WORLD CRITICS

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

YEARS OF THE MODERN

Years of the modern! years of the unperform'd!

Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas, I see not America only, not only Liberty's nation but other nations preparing, I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.

O STAR OF FRANCE

1870-71

O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud s.h.i.+p that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds, Nor helm nor helmsman.

Dim smitten star, Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul its dearest hopes, The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood, Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.

Star crucified--by traitors sold, Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land, Strange, pa.s.sionate, mocking, frivolous land.

Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee, Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all, And left thee sacred.

In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly, In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price, In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed thee, In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains, This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet, The spear thrust in thy side.

O star! O s.h.i.+p of France, beat back and baffled long!

Bear up O smitten orb! O s.h.i.+p continue on!

Sure as the s.h.i.+p of all, the Earth itself, Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons, Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, Onward beneath the sun following its course, So thee O s.h.i.+p of France!

Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd, The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication, When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world, (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours Columbia), Again thy star O France, fair l.u.s.trous star, In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, Shall beam immortal.

THOUGHTS

1

Of these years I sing, How they pa.s.s and have pa.s.s'd through convuls'd pains, as through parturitions, How America ill.u.s.trates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people--ill.u.s.trates evil as well as good, The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity, How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to other results).

How the great cities appear--how the Democratic ma.s.ses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sound and resounding, keep on and on, How society waits unform'd, and is for a while 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 turn be convuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions, And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic ma.s.ses too, serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors, serves, And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.

2

Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births, Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to impregnable and swarming places, Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be, Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, and the rest (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska), Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for--and of what all sights, North, South, East and West, are, Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind; Of the temporary use of materials for ident.i.ty's sake, Of the present, pa.s.sing, departing--of the growth of completer men than any yet, Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the Mississippi flows, Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected, Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of inalienable homesteads, Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and sweet blood, Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there, Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the Anahuacs, Of these songs, well understood there (being made for that area), Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there (O it lurks in me night and day--what is gain after all to savageness and freedom?).

BY BLUE ONTARIO'S Sh.o.r.e

1

By blue Ontario's sh.o.r.e, As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, _Chant me the poem_, it said, _that comes from the soul of America, chant me the carol of victory, And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet, And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy._

(Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, And death and infidelity at every step.)

2

A Nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

A breed whose proof is in time and deeds, What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections, We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves, We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves, We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world, From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.