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,