sisters!
Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the
     diverse! the compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at
     any rate include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner
     than another!
O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with
     irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
     Paumanok's sands,
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in
     every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States as during life, each man and
     woman my neighbor,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near
     to him and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with
     any of them,
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house
     of adobie,
Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in
     Maryland,
Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice
     welcome to me,
Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the
     Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming
     every new brother,

Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour
     they unite with the old ones,
Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion
     and equal, coming personally to you now,
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.

For your life adhere to me,
(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to
     give myself really to you, but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the
     universe,
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

On my way a moment I pause,
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
     harbinge glad and sublime,
And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red
     aborigines.

The red aborigines,
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of
     birds and animals in the woods, syllabled, to us for
     names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez,
     Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh,
     WallaWalla,
Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging
     the water and the land with names.

Expanding and swift, henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and
     audacious,
A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and
     branching,
A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with
     new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions
     and arts.

These, my voice announcing — I will sleep no more but arise,
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,
    fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and
    storms.

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
     flatboat, 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 Kaw, countless herds of buffalo
     feeding