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 | Leaves of grass (1872) |  |
10
27
I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries;I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison'd splint, the fetish, and the obi.
28
I see African and Asiatic towns;I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia;
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts;
154
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat;
I see Teheran—I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see the caravans toiling onward;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians—I see the pyramids and obelisks;
I look on chisel'd histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks;
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm'd, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries;
I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.
29
I see the menials of the earth, laboring;I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth;
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth;
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
30
I see male and female everywhere;I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs;
I see the constructiveness of my race;
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race;
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I go among them—I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
| Leaves of grass (1872) | |