Was somebody asking to see the Soul? See! your own shape and countenance—persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.
All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real body ever die, and be buried?
Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,
Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to
fitting spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of
death.
Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning,
the main concern,
Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life,
return in the body and the soul,
Indifferently before death and after death.
Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern—and includes and is the soul; Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.
15.
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
Live words—words to the lands.
O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and
grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those
sweet-aired interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west
Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and
Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!
The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the
inexperienced sisters!
Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the
compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate
include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you—not from one, any sooner than another!
O Death! O!—for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with
irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's
sands,
Crossing the prairies—dwelling again in Chicago—dwelling in every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States, as during life[4]—each man and woman my
neighbour,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me—and I yet with any of them;
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river—yet in my house of adobie,
Yet returning eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,
Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome to me,
or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;
Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the
Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same—yet welcoming every new
brother;
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with
the old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal—coming
personally to you now;
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.