See! steamers steaming through my poems! See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores; See pastures and forests in my poems—See animals, wild and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly grass; See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered steam printing-press—See the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan; See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching—pulses of Europe, duly returned; See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle; See ploughmen, ploughing farms—See miners, digging mines—See the numberless factories; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.
20.
O Camerado close!
O you and me at last—and us two only.
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph—and you shall also;
O hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more desirer and lover!
O to haste, firm holding—to haste, haste on, with me.
[Footnote 1: Paumanok is the native name of Long Island, State of New York.
It presents a fish-like shape on the map.]
[Footnote 2: Mannahatta, or Manhattan, is (as many readers will know) New
York.]
[Footnote 3: 1856.]
[Footnote 4: The poet here contemplates himself as yet living spiritually and in his poems after the death of the body, still a friend and brother to all present and future American lands and persons.]
[Footnote 5: New Hampshire.]
[Footnote 6: New York State.]