No More Learning

On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under
shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle--others
sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the
Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the
plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree.
--Northward, young men of Mannahatta--the target company from an excursion
returning home at evening--the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of
flowers presented by women;
Children at play--or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how
his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep! )
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi--he
ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around.
California life--the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume--the
staunch California friendship--the sweet air--the graves one, in
passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path;
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins--drivers driving mules or
oxen before rude carts--cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves.
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal
hemispheres--one Love, one Dilation or Pride.
--In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines--the
calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement,
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the
earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural
exclamations,
The setting-out of the war-party--the long and stealthy march,
The single-file--the swinging hatchets--the surprise and slaughter of
enemies.
--All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States--
reminiscences, all institutions,
All these States, compact--Every square mile of these States, without
excepting a particle--you also--me also.
Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields,
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling
between each other, ascending high in the air;
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects--the fall-traveller
southward, but returning northward early in the spring;
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and
shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside;
The city wharf--Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,
San Francisco,
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of
flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room,
darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on
the opposite wall, where the shine is.
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners;
Males, females, immigrants, combinations--the copiousness--the
individuality of the States, each for itself--the money-makers;
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces--the windlass, lever, pulley--
All certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity;
In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars--on the firm
earth, the lands, my lands!
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?