The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
    accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from
    yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
    balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,
    premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully
    to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
    the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! 
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense
    and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
    dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
    passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
    whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
    is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
    picks its way.

} France [the 18th Year of these States]

A great year and place
A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s
    heart closer than any yet.

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the
    roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings,
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single
    corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils,
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—­was not so shock’d at
    the repeated fusillades of the guns.

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? 
Could I wish humanity different? 
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? 
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

O Liberty!  O mate for me! 
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch
    them out in case of need,
Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d,
Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.