exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter
    of enemies;
All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,
    reminiscences, institutions,
All these States compact, every square mile of these States without
    excepting a particle;
Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields,
Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies
    shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air,
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler
    southward but returning northward early in the spring,
The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows and
    shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside,
The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New
    Orleans, San Francisco,
The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening—­me in my room—­the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the
    swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre
    of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift
    shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is;
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners,
Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the
    individuality of the States, each for itself—­the moneymakers,
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,
    pulley, all certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
In space the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—­on the firm
    earth, the lands, my lands,
O lands! all so dear to me—­what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it
    at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is,
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the
    myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,
Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande,
    the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the
    Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing
    and skipping and running,
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with
    parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and
    aquatic plants,
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing
    the crow with its bill, for amusement—­and I triumphantly twittering,
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
    themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside
    move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time
    reliev’d by other sentinels—­and I feeding and taking turns
    with the rest,
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner’d