Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

I behold the mariners of the world,
Some are in storms, some in the night, with the watch on the look-out, some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.

I behold the steam-ships of the world,
Some double the Cape of Storms, some Cape Verde, others Cape Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,
Others Dondra Head, others pass the Straits of Sunda, others Cape Lopatka, others Behring’s Straits,
Others Cape Horn, others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti, others Hudson’s Bay or Baffin’s Bay,
Others pass the Straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the Firth of Solway, others round Cape Clear, others the Land’s End,
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook,
Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Hoang-ho and Amoor, others the Indus, the Burampooter and Cambodia,
Others wait at the wharves of Manahatta, steamed up, ready to start,
Wait swift and swarthy in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburgh, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama,
Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco.

I see the tracks of the rail-roads of the earth,
I see them welding state to state, county to county, city to city, through North America,
I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,
I see them in Asia and in Africa.

I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,
I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions, of my race.

I see the long thick river-stripes of the earth,
I see where the Mississippi flows, I see where the Columbia flows,
I see the St. Lawrence and the falls of Niagara,
I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,
I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the Guadalquivir flow,
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,
I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po,
I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

I see the site of the great old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India,
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human forms,
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,
I see where druids walked the groves of Mona, I see the misletoe and vervain,
I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of gods, I see the old signifiers,
I see Christ once more eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons,
I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toiled faithfully and long, and then died,
I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus,
I see Kneph, blooming, dressed in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head,
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, Do not weep for me, this is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country, I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.

I see the battle-fields of the earth—grass grows upon them, and blossoms and corn,
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.

I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth.

I see the places of the sagas,
I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,
I see granite boulders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,
I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,
I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men’s spirits, when they wearied of their quiet graves, might rise up through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing billows, and be refreshed by storms, immensity, liberty, action.

I see the steppes of Asia,
I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs,
I see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,
I see the table-lands notched with ravines, I see the jungles and deserts,
I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing wolf.

I see the high-lands of Abyssinia,
I see flocks of goats feeding, I see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,
I see fields of teff-wheat, I see the places of verdure and gold.

I see the Brazilian vaquero,
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata,
I see the Guacho crossing the plains, I see the incomparable rider of horses with his lasso on his arm,
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.

I see the little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited;
I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still,
I see ten fishermen waiting—they discover now a thick school of mossbonkers, they drop the joined seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate, they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in the boats, others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs,
The boats are partly drawn up, the water slaps against them,
On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green-backed spotted moss-bonkers.

I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of Moingo, and about Lake Pepin,
He has beheld the quail and honey-bee, and sadly prepared to depart.

I see the regions of snow and ice,
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,
I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance,
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs,
I see the porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and the North Atlantic,
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland—I mark the long winters and the isolation.

I see the cities of the earth, and make myself a part of them,
I am a real Londoner, Parisian, Viennese,
I am a habitan of St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Constantinople,
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
I am of Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence,
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw—or northward in Christiana or Stockholm—or in some street in Iceland,
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.

I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish and the obi.

I see African and Asiatic towns,
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia,
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta,
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts,
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat,
I see Teheran, I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see the caravans toiling onward;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks,
I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone or granite blocks,
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.