These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and racked by the war-strife)

These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,

While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,

Day upon day and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,

Where you hold me enchained a certain time refusing to give me up,

Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul, you give me forever faces; (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for.)

Keep your splendid silent sun, Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,

Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum; Give me faces and streets-give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs !

Give me interminable eyes-give me women- give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!

Let me see new ones every day · hold new ones by the hand every day!

Give me such shows - give me the streets of Manhattan !

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching — give me the sound of the trumpets and drums!

(The soldiers in companies or regiments some starting away flushed and reckless,

Some, their time up, returning with thinned ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)

Give me the shores and wharves heavyfringed with black ships!

O such for me!

O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!

The saloon of the steamer !

The crowded excursion for me! The torchlight procession!

The dense brigade bound for the war, with high-piled military wagons following;

People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants, Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets (even the sight | of the wounded),

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus !

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Numberless crowded streets, high growths

of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, towards sundown,

The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,

The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-modelled, The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and moneybrokers, the river-streets,

Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,

The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors,

The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,

The

winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,

The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-formed, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes, Trottoirs thronged, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows, manners free and superb - open voices-hospitality the most courageous and friendly young men,

A million people

City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! City nested in bays! my city!

Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench

with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand

up, tall masts of Mannahatta! Stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house

or street or public assembly! Sound out, voices of young men ! loudly

and musically call me by my nighest name!

Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress !

Play the old role, the role that is great or

small according as one makes it! Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;

Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;

Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air; Receive the summer sky, you water, and

faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you! Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the

shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sunlit water!

Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters!

Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly

lowered at sunset!

Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,

You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,

About my body for me, and your body for

you, be hung our divinest aromas, Thrive, cities bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,

OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the showered halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories, sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon laterisen and swollen as if with tears, From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist, From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-aroused words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,

And

every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,

Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.