No More Learning

Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the Soul now?

Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?
Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obediently from the path
of one man or woman!
The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the foot-soles of one
man or woman!


7.

A sterile landscape covers the ore--there is as good as the best, for all
the forbidding appearance;
There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at
hand with their tongs and hammers;
What always served and always serves is at hand.

Than this nothing has better served--it has served all:
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek;
Served in building the buildings that last longer than any;
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi--served those whose relics
remain in Central America;
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the
druids;
Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills
of Scandinavia;
Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough
sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves;
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths--served the pastoral tribes
and nomads;
Served the long long distant Kelt--served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;
Served, before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia;
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of
those for war;
Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea;
For the mediaeval ages, and before the mediaeval ages;
Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.


8.

I see the European headsman;
He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,
And leans on a ponderous axe.

Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?
Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected
kings,
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.

I see those who in any land have died for the good cause;
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out;
(Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.
)

I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe;
Both blade and helve are clean;
They spirt no more the blood of European nobles--they clasp no more the
necks of queens.

I see the headsman withdraw and become useless;
I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy--I see no longer any axe upon it;
I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race--the
newest, largest race.


9.

America! I do not vaunt my love for you;
I have what I have.

The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid utterances;
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or
sick,
Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.

The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbours
them,
Cutters-down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains, or by the little lakes,
or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande--friendly gatherings,
the characters and fun,
Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river--dwellers on
coasts and off coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.

The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets;
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake craft, river craft.

The shapes arise!
Shipyards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a
bay and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine-planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for
knees,
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen
busy outside and inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt,
line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.


10.

The shapes arise!
The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud;
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the
bride's bed;
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape
of the babe's cradle;
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet;
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly
parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the
roof over the well-married young man and woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste wife, and joyously
eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work.