UNNAMED LANDS

Nations ten thousand years before these States, and
    many times ten thousand years before these States,
Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew
    up and travel'd their course and pass'd on,
What vast- built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral
     tribes and nomads,
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all
     others,

What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,
What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and
     phrenology,
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought
     of death and the soul,
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who
     brutish and undevelop'd,
Not a mark, not a record remains — and yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing,
     any more than we are for nothing,
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit
    as much as we now belong to it.

Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,
Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of
    insects,
Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,
    laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,
    libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful
    monuments.

Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?

I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands,
     every one exists this hour here or elsewhere,
     invisible to us,
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life,
     and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in
     life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person
     of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation,
    or of me;

Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,
    games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves,
    heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,
    counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those
    unnamed lands.

1860 1881

SONG OF PRUDENCE

Manhattan's streets I saunter'd, pondering
On Time, Space, Reality — on such as these, and abreast with
    them Prudence.
The last explanation always remains to be made about
    prudence,
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence
    that suits immortality.
The soul is of itself,
All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or
    her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime,
    or the hour of death,
But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the
    indirect lifetime.
The indirect is just as much as the direct,
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to
    the body, if not more.
Not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration,
    privacy of the onanist,
Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning,
    betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,
But has results beyond death as really as before death.

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth
    any thing.
No specification is necessary, all that a male or female does,
    that is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to
    him or her,
In the unshakable order of the universe and through
    the whole scope of it forever.
Who has been wise receives interest,
Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic,
    literat, young, old, it is the same,
The interest will come round — all will come round.
Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever
    affect, all of the