Leaves of Grass (1860)

contents | previous | next

THE thought of fruitage,

Of Death, (the life greater)—of seeds dropping into
the ground—of birth,

Of the steady concentration of America, inland,
upward, to impregnable and swarming places,

Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and the rest, are
to be,

Of what a few years will show there in Missouri,
Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the
rest,

Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation
for—and of what all the sights, North, South,
East and West, are;

Of the temporary use of materials for identity's
sake,

Of departing—of the growth of a mightier race
than any yet,

Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by
these shores,

Of California—of Oregon—and of me journeying
hence to live and sing there;

Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between
it and the spinal river,

Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine,

Of all sloping down there where the fresh free-
giver, the mother, the Mississippi flows—and
Westward still;

Of future men and women there—of happiness in
those high plateaus, ranging three thousand
miles, warm and cold,

Of cities yet unsurveyed and unsuspected, (as I am
also, and as it must be,)

Of the new and good names—of the strong develop-
ments—of the inalienable homesteads,

Of a free original life there—of simple diet, and
clean and sweet blood,

Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect
physique there,

Of immense spiritual results, future years, inland,
spread there each side of the Anahuacs,

Of these Leaves well-understood there, (being made
for that area,)

Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there,

(O it lurks in me night and day—What is gain,
after all, to savageness and freedom?)

contents | previous | next

The Walt Whitman Archive