Power and joy and exhilaration infused his whole frame. "Here," he murmured, "I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to Nature: never before did she come so close to me." And a miracle of transient transformation had been wrought upon him. His youth was "renewed like the eagle's," his lameness hardly perceptible, as he reluctantly emerged from the sweet water, and, having dried himself in the sun-glow, still more reluctantly dressed again. This was no longer the "battered, wrecked old man," the veteran of life-long battles with the world: but one who could realize with keenest perception every sensation of stalwart strength. He might have been, at this moment, one of his own "lumbermen in their winter camp," enjoying Day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin. (_Song of the Broad-Axe._) or a scion of the "youthful sinewy races," whom he had chanted in _Pioneers_: Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharpedged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!... All the past we leave behind! We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world; Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! Here at last was the true Walt Whitman, superabundant in splendid vitality and conscious of mental and physical power through every fibre of his being. [Illustration: THE PIONEERS. All the past we leave behind! We debouch upon a newer, mightier world,.... Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep.... Pioneers! O Pioneers! (_Pioneers._)] One last longing, loving look he cast upon the creek before returning homewards. The magnificent mid-noon lay full-tide over all, brimming the uttermost shores of beauty: it was the very apotheosis of summer, the tangible realization of Whitman's prophetic vision. All, all for immortality, Love like the light silently wrapping all, Nature's amelioration blessing all, The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening. Give me, O God, to sing that thought, Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, Health, peace, salvation universal.