Exult O lands! victorious lands!
Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields,
But here and hence your victory.

Melt, melt away ye armies — disperse ye blue-clad soldiers,
Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,
Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or
     North,
With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.

7

Loud O my throat, and clear O soul!
The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding,
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.

All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me,
I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last,
Man's innocent and strong arenas.

I see the heroes at other toils,
I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.

I see where the Mother of All,
With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long,
And counts the varied gathering of the products.

Busy the far, the sunlit panorama,
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane,
Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,
And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-
    recurring grass.

8

Toil on heroes! harvest the products!
Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All,
With dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you.

Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well!
The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.

Well-pleased America thou beholdest,
Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters,
The human- divine inventions, the labor-saving implements;
Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the
     revolving hay-rakes,
The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power
     machines,
The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well
     separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent
     pitchfork,
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin,
     and the rice-cleanser.
Beneath thy look O Maternal,
With these and else and with their own strong hands the
     heroes harvest.

All gather and all harvest,
Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now
     in security,
Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.

Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under
     thy great face only,
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed
     spear under thee,
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each
     ear in its light-green sheath,
Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil
     barns,
Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan,
     to theirs;
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard
     the golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the
     Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or
     bunches of grapes from the vines,
Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,
Under the beaming sun and under thee.

1867 1881