Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,
What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,
What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the
     morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

By the city's quadrangular houses — in log huts, camping
     with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet
     bed,
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and
     parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new
     purchase,
Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down
     the shallow river,
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where
     the buck turns furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where
     the otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where
     the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton
     plant, over the rice in its low moist field,
Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum
     and slender shoots from the gutters,
Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over
     the delicate blue-flower flax,
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer
     there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the
     breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on
     by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the
     leaves of the brush,
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the
     wheatlot,
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great
     gold-bug drops through the dark,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and
     flows to the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous
     shuddering of their hides,

Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons
     straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons
     from the rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its
     cylinders,
Where the human heart beats with terrible throes under its
     ribs,
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in
     it myself and looking composedly down,)
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat
     hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,
Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are
     corrupting below;
Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the
     regiments,
Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my
     countenance,
Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood
     outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good
     game of base-ball,
At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,
     bull-dances, drinking, laughter,
At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash,
     sucking the juice through a straw,
At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings,
     house-raisings;
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,
     screams, weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks
     are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,

Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the
     stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,
Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with
     short jerks,
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and
     lonesome prairie,
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square
     miles far and near,
Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the
     long-lived swan is curving and winding,
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs
     her near-human laugh,
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid
     by the high weeds,
Where band- neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground
     with their heads out,
Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery,
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled
     trees,
Where the yellow- crown'd heron comes to the edge of the
     marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,
Where the splash of