No More Learning

Each answering all--each sharing the earth with all.

What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What climes? what persons and lands are here?
Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering?
Who are the girls? who are the married women?
Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about each others'
necks?
What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists?
What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers?


2.
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;
Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west;
Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;
Within me is the longest day--the sun wheels in slanting rings--it does not
set for months.
Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the
horizon, and sinks again;
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.


3.

What do you hear, Walt Whitman?

I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing;
I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the
day;
I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky,
hunting on hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the
rebeck and guitar;
I hear continual echoes from the Thames;
I hear fierce French liberty songs;
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems;
I hear the Virginian plantation chorus of negroes, of a harvest night, in
the glare of pine-knots;
I hear the strong barytone of the 'long-shore-men of Mannahatta;
I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing;
I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes;
I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and
grass with the showers of their terrible clouds;
I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast
of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile;
I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada;
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule;
I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque;
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches--I hear the
responsive bass and soprano;
I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired Irish grandparents,
when they learn the death of their grandson;
I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at
Okotsk;
I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on--as the husky
gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-
chains and ankle-chains;
I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment--I hear the sibilant
whisk of thongs through the air;
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the
Romans;
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God,
the Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars, adages,
transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand
years ago.


4.

What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

I see a great round wonder rolling through the air:
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories,
palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the
surface;
I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping--and the
sun-lit part on the other side;
I see the curious silent change of the light and shade;
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land
is to me.

I see plenteous waters;
I see mountain-peaks--I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, where
they range;
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;
I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds;
I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps;
I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians--and to the north the Dofrafields,
and off at sea Mount Hecla;
I see Vesuvius and Etna--I see the Anahuacs;
I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red
Mountains of Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western America;
I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Anarctic icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones--the Atlantic and Pacific,
the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of
Guinea,
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay
of Biscay,
The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,
The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,
The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the world;
Some are in storms--some in the night, with the watch on the look-out;
Some drifting helplessly--some with contagious diseases.

I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in clusters in port,
some on their voyages;
Some double the Cape of Storms--some Cape Verde,--others Cape Guardafui,
Bon, or Bajadore;
Others Dondra Head--others pass the Straits of Sunda--others Cape Lopatka--
others Behring's Straits;
Others Cape Horn--others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti--others
Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay;
Others pass the Straits of Dover--others enter the Wash--others the Firth
of Solway--others round Cape Clear--others the Land's End;
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld;
Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook;
Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the Dardanelles;
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs;
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena:
Others the Niger or the Congo--others the Indus, the Burampooter and
Cambodia;
Others wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steamed up, ready to start;
Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia;
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg,
Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen;
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama;
Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New
Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco.


5.

I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth;
I see them welding State to State, city to city, through North America;
I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe;
I see them in Asia and in Africa.

I see the electric telegraphs of the earth;
I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,
passions, of my race.

I see the long river-stripes of the earth;
I see where the Mississippi flows--I see where the Columbia flows;
I see the Great River, and the Falls of Niagara;
I see the Amazon and the Paraguay;
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River, the
Yiang-tse, and the Pearl;
I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the
Guadalquivir flow;
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder;
I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po;
I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.