Long, Too Long America
Long, too long America, / Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Long, too long America, / Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,) / How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
Full of life now, compact, visible, / I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
Now finale to the shore, / Now land and life finale and farewell,