schooners, sloops, lighters! 
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!  Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
    nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses! 
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are, You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul, About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas, Thrive, cities—­bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
    sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual, Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—­we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not—­we love you—­there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

[Book IX]

} Song of the Answerer

1 Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer, To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me.

A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? 
Tell him to send me the signs.  And I stand before the young man
    face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and his
    left hand in my right hand,
And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for him that
    answers for all, and send these signs.

Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final,
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light,
Him they immerse and he immerses them.

Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape,
    people, animals,
The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so
    tell I my morning’s romanza,)
All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy,
The best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably reaps,
The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and he
    domiciles there,
Nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for him,
    the ships in the offing,
The perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they are for anybody.

He puts things in their attitudes,
He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,
He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and
    sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest
    never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.

He is the Answerer,
What can be answer’d he answers, and what cannot be answer’d he
    shows how it cannot be answer’d.