with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman,
    thou carriest great companions,
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.

5

Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky,
Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,
Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,
Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless
    procession issuing,
Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual
    strength and life,
World of the real — world of the twain in one,
World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to
    identity, body, by it alone,

Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite
    precious materials,
By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language,
    hither sent,
Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be
    constructed here,
(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals,
    literatures to come,)
Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I
    define thee,
How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?
I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good,
I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending
    the past,
I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the
    entire globe,
But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend
    thee,
I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now,
I merely thee ejaculate!
Thee in thy future,
Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd
    mind, thy soaring spirit,
Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-
    moving, fructifying all,
Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great
    hilarity,
Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd
    so long upon the mind of man,
The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of
     man;
Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male — thee in
    thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West,
    East,
(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter,
    son, endear'd alike, forever equal,)
Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but
    certain,
Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy
    proudest material civilization must remain in vain,)
Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship — thee in no
    single bible, saviour, merely,
Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles
    incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any,
(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great
    wars, nor in thy century's visible growth,
But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great
    Mother!)
Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies,
    students, born of thee,
Thee in thy democratic fçetes en-masse, thy high original
    festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers,
Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed,
    the edifice on sure foundations tied,)
Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational
    joys, thy love and godlike aspiration,
In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators,
    thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans,
These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy.

6

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all
    good for thee,
Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself,
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars,
To be thy natal stars my country, Ensemble, Evolution,
    Freedom,
Set in the sky of Law.)

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith,
Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd,
The general inner earth so long so sedulously draped over,
    now hence for what it is boldly laid bare,
Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale.

Not for success alone,
Not to fair-sail unintermitted always,
The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse
    than war shall cover thee all over,
(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace,
    its trials,
For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in
    prosperous peace, not war;)
In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee,
    thou in disease shalt swelter,
The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy
    breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,
Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge
    thy face with hectic,
But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount
    them all,
Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they
    may be,
They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,
While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself
    still