Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade,
     what is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my
     distant and day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not
     something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills
     pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the housesill,
     the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread
     wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred
     affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamour'd of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
     and mauls, and the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take
     me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
     whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their
     Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong
     arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon
     are ready,

The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big
     wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe
     and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his
     mother's bedroom;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his
     case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the
     manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard
     nods by the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his
     beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him,
     though I do not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean
     on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position,
     levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views
     them from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their
     partners, the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to
     the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her