By Blue Ontario's Shore

  By blue Ontario's shore,
  As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the
      dead that return no more,
  A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,
  Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,
      chant me the carol of victory,
  And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,
  And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.

  (Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,
  And death and infidelity at every step.)

       2
  A Nation announcing itself,
  I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
  I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

  A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,
  What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,
  We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
  We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
  We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of
      ourselves,
  We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,
  We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world,
  From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.

  Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
  Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or
      sinful in ourselves only.

  (O Mother—O Sisters dear!
  If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us,
  It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

       3
  Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
  There can be any number of supremes—one does not countervail
      another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or
      one life countervails another.

  All is eligible to all,
  All is for individuals, all is for you,
  No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.

  All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.

  Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

       4
  Piety and conformity to them that like,
  Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
  I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,
  Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!

  I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every
      one I meet,
  Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
  Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

  (With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,
  These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)

  O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?
  If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.

  Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,
  Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey—juice,
  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,
  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.

       5
  Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
  America brings builders, and brings its own styles.

  The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and
      pass'd to other spheres,
  A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.

  America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all
      hazards,
  Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use
      of precedents,
  Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under
      their forms,
  Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne
      from the house,
  Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was
      fittest for its days,
  That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who
      approaches,
  And that he shall be fittest for his days.

  Any period one nation must lead,
  One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.

  These States are the amplest poem,
  Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,
  Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the
      day and night,
  Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,
  Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
  Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the
      soul loves.

       6
  Land of lands and bards to corroborate!
  Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face,
  To him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's,
  His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,
  Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,
  Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,
  Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with
      incomparable love,
  Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,
  Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,
  Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
  Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia,
      Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,
  If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he
      stretching with them North or South,
  Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them,
  Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock,
      live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia,
  Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp,
  He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with
      northern transparent ice,
  Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,
  Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the
      fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,
  His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil,
  Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,
  Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
  Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,
  The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of
      the Constitution,
  The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,
  The union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,
  The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals,
      hunters, trappers,
  Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the
      gestation of new States,
  Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming
      up from the uttermost parts,
  Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially
      the young men,
  Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they
      have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the
      presence of superiors,
  The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and
      decision of their phrenology,
  The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd,
  The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity,
      good temper and open-handedness, the whole composite make,
  The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,
  The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement
      of the population,
  The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
  Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points,
  Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the Northeast,
      Northwest, Southwest,
  Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,
  Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the
      ruins of all the rest,
  On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours
      be the stake, and respite no more.

       7
  (Lo, high toward heaven, this day,
  Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd,
  I mark the new aureola around your head,
  No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
  With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing,
  And your port immovable where you stand,
  With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist,
  And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly
      crush'd beneath you,
  The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his
      senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,
  The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much,
  To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth,
  An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)

       8
  Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and ever
      keeps vista,
  Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn you,
  O days of the future I believe in you—I isolate myself for your sake,
  O America because you build for mankind I build for you,
  O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision
      and science,
  Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.
  (Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!
  But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,
      pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)

       9
  I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,
  I heard the voice arising demanding bards,
  By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be
      fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

  To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
  That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle,
      as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.

  Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most
      need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest,
  Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their
      poets shall.

  (Soul of love and tongue of fire!
  Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
  Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)

       10
  Of these States the poet is the equable man,
  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
      their full returns,
  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither
      more nor less,
  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
  He is the equalizer of his age and land,
  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,
      thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,
      commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,
      immortality, government,
  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as
      good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
  He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,)
  He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round
      helpless thing,
  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women
      as dreams or dots.

  For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
  For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
  The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.

  Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
  They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
  (Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always
      ready to fall for Liberty.)

       11
  For the great Idea,
  That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

  Songs of stern defiance ever ready,
  Songs of the rapid arming and the march,
  The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,
  Warlike flag of the great Idea.

  (Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
  I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,
  I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight—O the
      hard-contested fight!
  The cannons ope their rosy............