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 | Leaves of grass (1872) |  |
7
14
A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance;There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd; the hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers;
What always served, and always serves, is at hand.
172
15
Than this, nothing has better served—it has served all:Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek:
Served in building the buildings that last longer than any;
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi—served those whose relics remain in Central America;
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the druids;
Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover'd hills of Scandinavia;
Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves;
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths—served the pastoral tribes and nomads;
Served the long, long distant Kelt—served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;
Served before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia;
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war;
Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea;
For the mediæval ages, and before the mediæval ages;
Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.
| Leaves of grass (1872) | |