No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, 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.

     16
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.

17
Expanding and swift, 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.

     18
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 Kaw, 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-cylinder’d steam printing-press—­see, the electric
    telegraph stretching across the continent,
See, through Atlantica’s depths pulses American Europe reaching,
    pulses of Europe duly return’d,
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, drest in
    working dresses,
See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me
    well-belov’d, close-held by day and night,
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there—­read the hints come at last.