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282 Beneath thy look O Maternal,

With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest.

All gather and all harvest,

Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security,

Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.

Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great face only,

Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spear under thee,

Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in its light-green sheath,

Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,

Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;

Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,

Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,

Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the Borders,

Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches of grapes from the vines,

Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,

Under the beaming sun and under thee. 



was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird

And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pondside, 