Fecund America — to-day,
Thou art all over set in births and joys!
Thou groan'st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a
     swathing-garment,
Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,
A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast
     demesne,
As some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou ridest
     into port,
As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so
     have the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out
     of thee;
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out
     upon thy world, and lookest East and lookest West,
Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles,
     a million farms, and missest nothing,
Thou all-acceptress — thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable
     as God is hospitable.)

4

When late I sang sad was my voice,
Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of
     hatred and smoke of war;
In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,
Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying.
But now I sing not war,
Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of
     battle;
No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.

Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-
    stepping armies?
Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that
     follow'd.

(Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy
     legs,
With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks
     and your muskets;
How elate I stood and watch'd you, where starting off you
     march'd.

Pass — then rattle drums again,
For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with
     your fever,
O my land's maim'd darlings, with the plenteous bloody
     bandage and the crutch,
Lo, your pallid army follows.)

5

But on these days of brightness,
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and
    lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and
     barns,
Should the dead intrude?

Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,
They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,
And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.

Nor do I forget you Departed,
Nor in winter or summer my lost ones,

But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and
     at peace, like pleasing phantoms,
Your memories rising glide silently by me.

6

I saw the day the return of the heroes,
(Yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return,
Them that day I saw not.)

I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,
I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in
     clusters of mighty camps.

No holiday soldiers — youthful, yet veterans,
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead
     and workshop,
Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field.

A pause — the armies wait,
A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait,
The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as
     dawn,
They melt, they disappear.