Passage to India

       1
  Singing my days,
  Singing the great achievements of the present,
  Singing the strong light works of engineers,
  Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
  In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
  The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,
  The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;
  Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,
  The Past! the Past! the Past!

  The Past—the dark unfathom'd retrospect!
  The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows!
  The past—the infinite greatness of the past!
  For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
  (As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on,
  So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)

       2
  Passage O soul to India!
  Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.

  Not you alone proud truths of the world,
  Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,
  But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables,
  The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams,
  The deep diving bibles and legends,
  The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;
  O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun!
  O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,
      mounting to heaven!
  You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd
      with gold!
  Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams!
  You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!
  You too with joy I sing.

  Passage to India!
  Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
  The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,
  The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
  The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
  The lands to be welded together.

  A worship new I sing,
  You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
  You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
  You, not for trade or transportation only,
  But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul.

       3
  Passage to India!
  Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,
  I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd,
  I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Engenie's leading the van,
  I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level
      sand in the distance,
  I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd,
  The gigantic dredging machines.

  In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)
  I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,
  I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying
      freight and passengers,
  I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,
  I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,
  I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes,
      the buttes,
  I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless,
      sage-deserts,
  I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great
      mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains,
  I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pass the
      Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,
  I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,
  I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,
  I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
  Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold
      enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,
  Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
  Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
  Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
  The road between Europe and Asia.

  (Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!
  Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
  The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)

       4
  Passage to India!
  Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
  Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,
  Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.

  Along all history, down the slopes,
  As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,
  A ceaseless thought, a varied train—lo, soul, to thee, thy sight,
      they rise,
  The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;
  Again Vasco de Gama sails forth,
  Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compass,
  Lands found and nations born, thou born America,
  For purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd,
  Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish'd.

       5
  O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
  Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty,
  Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
  Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
  Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
  With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
  Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.

  Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
  Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
  Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
  With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
  With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and
      Whither O mocking life?

  Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
  Who Justify these restless explorations?
  Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
  Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
  What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a
      throb to answer ours,
  Cold earth, the place of graves.)

  Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
  Perhaps even now the time has arrived.

  After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,)
  After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work,
  After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the
      geologist, ethnologist,
  Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
  The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

  Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors,
      shall be justified,
  All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd,
  All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,
  All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and
      link'd together,
  The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be
      completely Justified,
  Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and compacted by
      the true son of God, the poet,
  (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
  He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)
  Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more,
  The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

       6
  Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!
  Year of the purpose accomplish'd!
 ............