You
Spaniard
of Spain!
Whitman
I see vapours exhaling from unexplored countries;
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish,
and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns;
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia;
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their
huts;
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo;
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat;
I see Teheran--I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands--I see
the caravans toiling onward;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians--I see the pyramids and obelisks;
I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of
sandstone or on granite blocks;
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen
cloth, lying there many centuries;
I look on the fallen Theban, the large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck,
the hands folded across the breast.
I see the menials of the earth, labouring;
I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth;
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the
earth;
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere;
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs;
I see the constructiveness of my race;
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race;
I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations--I go among them--I mix
indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
11.
You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed,
nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbour of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman
too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian!
