Page:Leaves of Grass (1882).djvu/164

158 But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,

To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,

To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,

Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,

To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,

These also are the lessons of our New World;

While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!

Long and long has the grass been growing,

Long and long has the rain been falling,

Long has the globe been rolling round.

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,

Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,

That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and Æneas', Odysseus' wanderings,

Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus,

Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa's gate and on Mount Moriah,

The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles, and Italian collections,

For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you.

Responsive to our summons,

Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination,

Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,

She comes! I hear the rusding of her gown,

I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance,

I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a- turning, rolling,

Upon this very scene.

The dame of dames! can I believe then,

Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?

Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her?

But that she's left them all—and here?

Yes, if you will allow me to say so,

I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,