1.
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
2.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies;
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks;
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
3.
For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For you! for you, I am trilling these songs,
In the love of comrades,
In the high-towering love of comrades.
PULSE OF MY LIFE.
Not heaving from my ribbed breast only;
Not in sighs at night, in rage, dissatisfied with myself;
Not in those long-drawn, ill-suppressed sighs;
Not in many an oath and promise broken;
Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition;
Not in the subtle nourishment of the air;
Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists;
Not in the curious systole and diastole within, which will one day cease;
Not in many a hungry wish, told to the skies only;
Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone, far in the
wilds;
Not in husky pantings through clenched teeth;
Not in sounded and resounded words—chattering words, echoes, dead words;
Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day;
Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you and dismiss you
continually—Not there;
Not in any or all of them, O Adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these songs.
AUXILIARIES.
WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal;
And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,
And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun.