Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/171

Rh Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—
 * drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts
 * —cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves;

Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American
 * Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love,
 * one Dilation or Pride;

In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the
 * aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will
 * arbitration, and indorsement,

The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun
 * and then toward the earth,

The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted
 * faces and guttural exclamations,

The setting out of the war-party—the long and
 * stealthy march,

The single file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise
 * and slaughter of enemies;

All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These
 * States—reminiscences, all institutions,

All These States, compact—Every square mile of
 * These States, without excepting a particle—you
 * also—me also,

Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields,
 * Paumanok's fields,

Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow
 * butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending
 * high in the air;

The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the
 * fall traveller southward, but returning northward
 * early in the spring;

The country boy at the close of the day, driving the
 * herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter
 * to browse by the road-side;