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!
Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!
(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)
I see O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given
and giving all,
Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the
New World,
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding
a festival garland,
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.
Passage to India!
Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of
man,
The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.
Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,
The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth’s
lands,
The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their
many affluents,
(I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming
all,)
The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly
dying,
On one side China and on the other side Persia and
Arabia,
To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal,
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions,
castes,
Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender
and junior Buddha,
Central and southern empires and all their belongings,
possessors,
The wars of Tamerlane,the reign of Aurungzebe,
The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians,
Byzantium, the
Arabs, Portuguese,
The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta
the Moor,
Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks
to be fill’d,
The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at
rest,
Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.
The mediaeval navigators rise before me,
The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise,
Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of
the earth in spring,
The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.
And who art thou sad shade?
Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,
With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes,
Spreading around with every look of thine a golden
world,
Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.
As the chief histrion,
Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,
Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,
(History’s type of courage, action, faith,)
Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,
His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,
His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner,
chain’d,
Behold his dejection, poverty, death.


