many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often
     baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out — aye
     here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

1871 1871

TURN O LIBERTAD

Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,
From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more,
     resolute, sweeping the world,
Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,
From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings,
     slavery, caste,
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv'd and to come — give
     up that backward world,
Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,
But what remains remains for singers for you — wars to come
     are for you,
(Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and
     the wars of the present also inure;)
Then turn, and be not alarm'd O Libertad — turn your undying
     face,
To where the future, greater than all the past,
Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

1865 1871

TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD

To the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last,
(Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the
     tent-ropes,)
In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits
     and vistas again to peace restored,
To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond,
     to the South and the North,
To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest
     my songs,
To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading
     wide,
To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable
     air;
And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)
The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges
     mutely,
The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the
     son,
The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the
     end,
But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.

1865-6 1881