Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, All throbs, dilates--the farms, woods, streets of cities--workmen at work, Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing--steamers’ pennants of smoke--and under the forenoon sun, Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love. [VII] By That Long Scan of Waves By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade--some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral, The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand, My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past, By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble--some wave, or part of wave, Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean. [VIII] Then Last Of All Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning: Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song. Election Day, November, 1884 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, ’Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon’s white cones--nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes--nor Mississippi’s stream: --This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name--the still small voice vibrating--America’s choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) The stretch of North and South arous’d--sea-board and inland-- Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross: --Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails. With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!