Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

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 refresh’d 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 notch’d with ravines, I see the jungles and deserts,

I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tail’d sheep,

the antelope, and the burrowing wolf

I see the highlands of Abyssinia,

I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,

And see fields of teff-wheat and places of verdure and gold.

I see the Brazilian vaquero,

I see the Bolivian ascending mount Sorata,

I see the Wacho 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.

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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 at random a part of them,

I am a real Parisian,

I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople,

I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,

I am of London, 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 Christiania or

Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in some street in Iceland,

I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.

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I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,

I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison’d splint, the

fetich, 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, Tokio,

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,

see the caravans toiling onward,

I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks.

I look on chisell’d histories, records of conquering kings,

dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks,

I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm’d,

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.

I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,

I see all the prisoners in the prisons,

I see the defective human bodies of the earth,

The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,

The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,

The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.

I see male and female everywhere,

I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,

I see the constructiveness of my race,

I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,

I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, I go among them, I

mix indiscriminately,

And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.

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You whoever you are!

You daughter or son of England!

You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!

You dim-descended, black, divine-soul’d African, large, fine-headed,

nobly-form’d, superbly destin’d, on equal terms with me!

You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!

You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!

You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!

You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock whence I

myself have descended;)

You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!

You neighbor of the Danube!

You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!

You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!

You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!

You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!

You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!

You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!

You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting

arrows to the mark!

You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!

You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!

You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once

on Syrian ground!

You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!

You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates!

you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending mount Ararat!

You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets

of Mecca!

You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb ruling your

families and tribes!

You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus,

or lake Tiberias!

You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!

You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!

All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent

of place!

All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!

And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!

And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!

Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!

Each of us inevitable,

Each of us limitless — each of us with his or her right upon the earth,

Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,

Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

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You Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair’d hordes!

You own’d persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!

You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!

You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon for all

your glimmering language and spirituality!

You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!

You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,

groveling, seeking your food!

You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!

You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d Bedowee!

You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!

You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Feejeeman!

I do not prefer others so very much before you either,

I do not say one word against you, away back there where you stand,

(You will come forward in due time to my side.)

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My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth,

I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in

all lands,

I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away to distant

continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,

I think I have blown with you you winds;

You waters I have finger’d every shore with you,

I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through,