WALT WHITMAN Ultimate Collection: 500+ Works in Poetry & Prose. Walt Whitman

      BOOK XXXI

       Table of Contents

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood

       Table of Contents

      1

       Thou Mother with thy equal brood,

       Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,

       A special song before I go I’d sing o’er all the rest,

       For thee, the future.

      I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,

       I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,

       I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish’d.

      The paths to the house I seek to make,

       But leave to those to come the house itself.

      Belief I sing, and preparation;

       As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,

       But greater still from what is yet to come,

       Out of that formula for thee I sing.

      2

       As a strong bird on pinions free,

       Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

       Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,

       Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.

      The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,

       Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,

       Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor

       library;

       But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of

       an Illinois prairie,

       With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas

       uplands, or Florida’s glades,

       Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,

       With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,

       And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound,

       That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

      And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,

       Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted

       for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,

       Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou

       transcendental Union!

       By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,

       Thought of man justified, blended with God,

       Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!

       Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!

      3

       Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

       To formulate the Modern — out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,

       Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,

       (Recast, may-be discard them, end them — maybe their work is done,

       who knows?)

       By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead,

       To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

      And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain,

       Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long,

       Thou carefully prepared by it so long — haply thou but unfoldest it,

       only maturest it,

       It to eventuate in thee — the essence of the by-gone time contain’d in thee,

       Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with

       reference to thee;

       Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,

       The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.

      4

       Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,

       Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the Present only,

       The Past is also stored in thee,

       Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western

       continent alone,

       Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,

       With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or

       swim with thee,

       With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou

       bear’st the other continents,

       Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;

       Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou

       carriest great companions,

       Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,

       And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.

      5

       Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,

       Like a limitless golden cloud filling the westernr sky,

       Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,

       Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,

       Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing,

       Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength

       and life,

       World of the real — world of the twain in one,