16.
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.
For your life, adhere to me;
Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;
I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to
you—but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
17.
On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft—still the Future of the States I harbinge,
glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.
The red aborigines! Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names; Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.
18.
O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;
A world primal again—vistas of glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.
These my voice announcing—I will sleep no more, but arise; You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
19.