Leaves of Grass Part 51

For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

(As a projectile form'd, impell'd, pa.s.sing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)

2 Pa.s.sage O soul to India!

Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.

Not you alone proud truths of the world, Nor you alone ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables, The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun!

O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!

You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold!

Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams!

You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!

You too with joy I sing.

Pa.s.sage to India!

Lo, soul, seest thou not G.o.d's purpose from the first?

The earth to be spann'd, connected by network, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing, You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, You, not for trade or transportation only, But in G.o.d's name, and for thy sake O soul.

3 Pa.s.sage to India!

Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain, I see in one the Suez ca.n.a.l initiated, open'd, I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Engenie's leading the van, I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance, I pa.s.s swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd, The gigantic dredging machines.

In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and pa.s.sengers, I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world, I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the b.u.t.tes, I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains, I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pa.s.s the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas, I scan the n.o.ble Elk mountain and wind around its base, I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river, I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines, Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows, Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines, Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, The road between Europe and Asia.

(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!

Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, The sh.o.r.e thou foundest verifies thy dream.)

4 Pa.s.sage to India!

Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead, Over my mood stealing and spreading they come, Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.

Along all history, down the slopes, As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, A ceaseless thought, a varied train-lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise, The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions; Again Vasco de Gama sails forth, Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compa.s.s, Lands found and nations born, thou born America, For purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd, Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish'd.

5 O vast Rondure, swimming in s.p.a.ce, Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty, Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness, Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above, Below, the manifold gra.s.s and waters, animals, mountains, trees, With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention, Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.

Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations, With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts, With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?

Who Justify these restless explorations?

Who speak the secret of impa.s.sive earth?

Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?

What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, Cold earth, the place of graves.)

Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out, Perhaps even now the time has arrived.

After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,) After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work, After the n.o.ble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, Finally shall come the poet worthy that name, The true son of G.o.d shall come singing his songs.

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd, All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together, The whole earth, this cold, impa.s.sive, voiceless earth, shall be completely Justified, Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and compacted by the true son of G.o.d, the poet, (He shall indeed pa.s.s the straits and conquer the mountains, He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,) Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more, The true son of G.o.d shall absolutely fuse them.

6 Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!

Year of the purpose accomplish'd!

Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!

(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,) I see O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all, Europe to Asia, Africa join'd, and they to the New World, The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland, As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.

Pa.s.sage to India!

Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.

Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward, The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth's lands, The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many affluents, (I my sh.o.r.es of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,) The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying, On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia, To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal, The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes, Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha, Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors, The wars of Tamerlane,the reign of Aurungzebe, The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor, Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be fill'd, The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest, Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.

The mediaeval navigators rise before me, The world of 1492, with its awaken'd enterprise, Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring, The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.

And who art thou sad shade?

Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes, Spreading around with every look of thine a golden world, Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.

As the chief histrion, Down to the footlights walks in some great scena, Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself, (History's type of courage, action, faith,) Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet, His voyage behold, his return, his great fame, His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain'd, Behold his dejection, poverty, death.

(Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes, Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?

Lies the seed unreck'd for centuries in the ground? lo, to G.o.d's due occasion, Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, And fills the earth with use and beauty.)

7 Pa.s.sage indeed O soul to primal thought, Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, The young maturity of brood and bloom, To realms of budding bibles.

O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me, Thy circ.u.mnavigation of the world begin, Of man, the voyage of his mind's return, To reason's early paradise, Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions, Again with fair creation.

8 O we can wait no longer, We too take ship O soul, Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, Fearless for unknown sh.o.r.es on waves of ecstasy to sail, Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) Caroling free, singing our song of G.o.d, Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

With laugh and many a kiss, (Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,) O soul thou pleasest me, I thee.

Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in G.o.d, But with the mystery of G.o.d we dare not dally.

O soul thou pleasest me, I thee, Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and s.p.a.ce and Death, like waters flowing, Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over, Bathe me O G.o.d in thee, mounting to thee, I and my soul to range in range of thee.

O Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath, Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, Thou moral, spiritual fountain-affection's source-thou reservoir, (O pensive soul of me-O thirst unsatisfied-waitest not there?

Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?) Thou pulse-thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of s.p.a.ce, How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes?

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of G.o.d, At Nature and its wonders, Time and s.p.a.ce and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of s.p.a.ce.

Greater than stars or suns, Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth; What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?

What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?

What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?

What cheerful willingness for others' sake to give up all?

For others' sake to suffer all?

Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev'd, The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done, Surrounded, copest, frontest G.o.d, yieldest, the aim attain'd, As fill'd with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.

9 Pa.s.sage to more than India!

Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?

O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?

Disportest thou on waters such as those?

Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?

Then have thy bent unleash'd.