I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the
Romans;
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God,
the Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars, adages,
transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand
years ago.
4.
What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?
I see a great round wonder rolling through the air:
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories,
palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the
surface;
I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping--and the
sun-lit part on the other side;
I see the curious silent change of the light and shade;
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land
is to me.
I see plenteous waters;
I see mountain-peaks--I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, where
they range;
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;
I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds;
I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps;
I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians--and to the north the Dofrafields,
and off at sea Mount Hecla;
I see Vesuvius and Etna--I see the Anahuacs;
I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red
Mountains of Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western America;
I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Anarctic icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones--the Atlantic and Pacific,
the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of
Guinea,
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay
of Biscay,
The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,
The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,
The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the world;
Some are in storms--some in the night, with the watch on the look-out;
Some drifting helplessly--some with contagious diseases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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