of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse,
     even as here I see thee,
With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling
     snow,
By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,
By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty!
Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy
     swinging lamps at night,
Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like
     an earthquake, rousing all,
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly
     holding,
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib
     piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

1876 1881

O MAGNET-SOUTH

O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening perfumed South!
     my South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good
     and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things — all moving
     things and the trees where I was born —
     the grains, plants, rivers,
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they
     flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands or through
     swamps,
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw,
     the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa,
     and the Sabine,
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul
     to haunt their banks again,
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float
     on the Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or
     through pleasant openings or dense forests,
I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree
     and the blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off
     Georgia, I coast up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the
     yellowpine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and
     orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto,
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound
     through an inlet, and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar,
     hemp!
The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with
     large white flowers,
The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old
     woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural
     stillness, (here in these dense swamps the free-
     booter carries his gun, and the fugitive has his
     conceal'd hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known half-
    impassable swamps, infested by reptiles,
     resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the
     sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat,
     and the whirr of the rattlesnake,
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all
     the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night,

The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the
     opossum;
A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd
     corn, slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels,
     with beautiful ears each well-sheath'd in its husk;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand
     them not, I will depart;
O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a
     Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old
     Tennessee and never wander more.

1860 1881

MANNAHATTA

I WAS asking for something specific and perfect
     for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid,
     sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from
     of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-
     bays, superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and
     steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-
     founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron,
     slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward
     clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward
     sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger
     adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the
     lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers
     well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of
     business, the houses of business of the ship-
    merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a
     week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers
     of horses, the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the
     sailing clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice
     in the river, passing along up or down with the
     flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd,
     beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,