University of Virginia Library

NATIONS ten thousand years before These States,      and many times ten thousand years before      These States;
Garner'd clusters of ages, that men and women like      us grew up and travel'd their course, and      pass'd on;
What vast-built cities — what orderly republics — what      pastoral tribes and nomads;
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps trancending      all others;
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;
What sort of marriage — what costumes — what phy-     siology and phrenology;
What of liberty and slavery among them — what they      thought of death and the soul;
Who were witty and wise — who beautiful and poetic —      who brutish and undevelop'd;
Not a mark, not a record remains — And yet all re-     mains.
2  O I know that those men and women were not for      nothing, any more than we are for nothing;
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world      every bit as much as we now belong to it, and      as all will henceforth belong to it.
3  Afar they stand — yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances, learn'd and calm,
Some naked and savage — Some like huge collections      of insects,
Some in tents — herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horse-     men,
Some prowling through woods — Some living peacea-     bly on farms, laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, pala-     ces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres,      wonderful monuments.
4   Are those billions of men really gone?
Ase those women of the old experience of the earth      gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?
5  I believe of all those billions of men and women      that fill'd the unnamed lands, every one exists      this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in      exact proportion to what he or she grew from      in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, be-     came, loved, sinned, in life.
6  I believe that was not the end of those nations, or      any person of them, any more than this shall      be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature,      products, games, wars, manners, crimes, pris-     ons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect their re-     sults curiously await in the yet unseen world —      counterparts of what accrued to them in the      seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those      unnamed lands.