Starting from Paumanok

See! steamers steaming through my poems!

See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and
landing;

See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s
hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the
rude fence, and the backwoods village;

See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the
other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and
retreat upon my poems, as upon their own
shores;

See, pastures and forests in my poems—See, animals,
wild and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, count-
less 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-cylinder’d steam printing-press—See,
the electric telegraph, stretching across the
Continent, from the Western Sea to Man-
hattan;

See, through Atlantica’s depths, pulses American,
Europe reaching—pulses of Europe, duly re-
turn;

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

See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners, dig-
ging mines—See, the numberless factories;

See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—
See from among them, superior judges, philo-
sophs, Presidents, emerge, drest 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.

O Camerado close!

O you and me at last—and us two only.

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

O something extatic 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.