} Still Though the One I Sing

Still though the one I sing,
(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,
I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection!  O
    quenchless, indispensable fire!)

} Shut Not Your Doors

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet
    needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

} Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! 
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
    before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
    casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

} To You

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why
    should you not speak to me? 
And why should I not speak to you?

} Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.

[Book II]

} Starting from Paumanok

     1
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,
Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner
    in California,
Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from
    the spring,
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy, Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of
    mighty Niagara,
Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and
    strong-breasted bull,
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,
    my amaze,
Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the
    mountain-hawk,
And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the
    swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

2
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. 
This then is life,
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.