No More Learning

O lands! O all so dear to me--what you are (whatever it is), I become a
part of that, whatever it is.
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of
gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida--or in Louisiana, with
pelicans breeding,
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the
Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan,
or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and
running;
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties
of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants;
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow
with its bill, for amusement--And I triumphantly twittering;
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
themselves--the body of the flock feed--the sentinels outside move
around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time
relieved by other sentinels--And I feeding and taking turns with
the rest;
In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising
desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the
hoofs as sharp as knives--And I plunging at the hunters, cornered
and desperate;
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the
countless workmen working in the shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and no less in myself than
the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more inevitably
united part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands
are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains,
Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil--these me,--
These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to
America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to
afford the like to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be
eligible as I am?
How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect
bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?

[Footnote 1: 1858-59. ]



_THE PAST-PRESENT. _


I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for
these chants--and now I have found it.
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept
nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present--it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy--in this America--the Old World also;
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day;
It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics,
creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the average man of to-day.



_YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED. _


Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises--I see it part away for more
august dramas;
I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation but other nations
embattling;
I see tremendous entrances and exits--I see new combinations--I see the
solidarity of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage;
Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to them
closed?
I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law
by her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste;
--What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions!
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way;
Never were such sharp questions asked as this day;
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God.
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonises the Pacific,
the archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale
engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,
all lands;
--What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the
seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming _en masse_? --for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;
No one knows what will happen next--such portents fill the days and nights.
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it,
is full of phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
This incredible rush and heat--this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, O
years!
Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I
sleep or wake! )
The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,
The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.



_FLUX. _


Of these years I sing,
How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions;
How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure
fulfilment, despite of people--Illustrates evil as well as good;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths,
obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity;
How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States--or see freedom or
spirituality--or hold any faith in results.