A Broadway Pageant

       1
  Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
  Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
  Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
  Ride to-day through Manhattan.

  Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
  In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers,
  Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching,
  But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.

  When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,
  When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love,
  When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell I love
      spit their salutes,
  When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and
      heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,
  When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the
      wharves, thicken with colors,
  When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,
  When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,
  When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and
      foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
  When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes
      gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,
  When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves
      forward visible,
  When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands
      of years answers,
  I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the
      crowd, and gaze with them.

       2
  Superb-faced Manhattan!
  Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.
  To us, my city,
  Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite
      sides, to walk in the space between,
  To-day our Antipodes comes.

  The Originatress comes,
  The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,
  Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,
  Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
  With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,
  The race of Brahma comes.

  See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,
  As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.

  For not the envoys nor the tann'd Japanee from his island only,
  Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself
      appears, the past, the dead,
  The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,
  The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
  The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the
      ancient of ancients,
  Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more
      are in the pageant-procession.

  Geography, the world, is in it,
  The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,
  The coast you henceforth are facing—you Libertad! from your Western
   &nb............