excerpt 2 from ‘Starting from Paumanok’

See! steamers steaming through my poems!
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing;
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flat-
boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the
backwoods village;
See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and
retreat upon my poems,
as upon their own shores;
See, pastures and forests in my poems—see, animals, wild and
tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo,
feeding on short curly grass;
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and
commerce;
See, the many-cylinder’d steam printing-press—see, the electric
telegraph, stretching across the continent, from the Western Sea
to Manhattan;
See, through Atlantica’s depths, pulses American, Europe
reaching—pulses of Europe, duly return’d,
See, the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting,
blowing the steam-whistle;
See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners, digging mines—
see, the numberless factories;
See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—see from
among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge,
drest in working dresses;
See, lounging through the shops and fields of The States, me,
well-belov’d, close-held by day and night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at
last.

Walt Whitman,. “Starting from Paumanok.” (excerpt)

–– posted by Roger W. Smith

   August 2020