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Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once

catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless

successions of diseas'd corpses,

It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,

It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,

It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings

from them at last.

To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!

Keep on—Liberty is to be subserv'd whatever occurs;

That is nothing that is quell'd by one or two failures, or any

number of failures,

Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any

unfaithfulness,

Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,

Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is

positive and composed, knows no discouragement,

Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,

But songs of insurrection also,

For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,

And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,

And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,

The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,

The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and

leadballs do their work,

The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,

The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,

The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,

The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;

But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the

infidel enter'd into full possession.

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the

second or third to go,

It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,

And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged

from any part of the earth,

Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from

that part of the earth,

And the infidel come into full possession.

Then courage European revolter, revoltress!

For till all ceases neither must you cease.

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself,

nor what any thing is for,)

But I will search carefully for it even in being foil'd,

In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment—for they too are great.

Did we think victory great?

So it is—but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help'd, that

defeat is great,

And that death and dismay are great.

Unnamed Land

Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten

thousand years before these States,

Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and

travel'd their course and pass'd on,

What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes

and nomads,

What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,

What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,

What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,

What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death

and the soul,

Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and

undevelop'd,

Not a mark, not a record remains—and yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more

than we are for nothing,

I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much

as we now belong to it.

Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,

Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,

Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,

Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,

Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,

laboring, reaping,