The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the well-riddled target,

The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,

The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,

The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain,

The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other;

The woollypates hoe in the sugarfield, the overseer views them from his saddle;

The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,

Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position and levels his piece;

The western turkey-shooting draws old and young .... some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,

The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,

The young fellow drives the express-wagon .... I love him though I do not know him;

The machinist rolls up his sleeves .... the policeman travels his beat .... the gatekeeper marks who pass,

The quadroon girl is sold at the stand .... the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,

What is removed drops horribly in a pail;

The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,

He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;

The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,

He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bedroom;

The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,

The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,

The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,

The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,

The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,

The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are ready,

The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,

The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,

The carpenter dresses his plank .... the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,

The pure contralto sings in the organloft,

Scattering it freely forever.

Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,

Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,

Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,

I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses,

Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,

I am enamoured of growing outdoors,

They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,

I see in them and myself the same old law.

The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,

The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,

The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,

I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,

Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,