Thus on the northern coast,
In the echo of teamsters’ calls and the clinking chains, and the
    music of choppers’ axes,
The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan,
Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic,
    ancient and rustling,
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,
From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah,
To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the
    settlements, features all,
In the Mendocino woods I caught.

     2
The flashing and golden pageant of California,
The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands, The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south, Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs, The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry, The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening,
    the rich ores forming beneath;
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession, A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere, Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the
    whole world,
To India and China and Australia and the thousand island paradises
    of the Pacific,
Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,
    the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.

     3
But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore, (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,) I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
    till now deferr’d,
Promis’d to be fulfill’d, our common kind, the race.

The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,
In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees imperial,
In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even vital air.

Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,
I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir of
    the past so grand,
To build a grander future.

[Book XV]

} A Song for Occupations

     1
A song for occupations! 
In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find
    the developments,
And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen! 
Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of
    me, what would it amount to? 
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,
    what would it amount to? 
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learn’d, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,
A man like me and never the usual terms.