AMERICA always!
 Always our own feuillage!
 Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of
 Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
 Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver
 mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath'd Cuba!
 Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern Sea--inseparable with
 the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western Seas;
 The area the eighty-third year of These States--the three and a half
 millions of square miles;
 The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main--
 the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
 The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of
 dwellings--Always these, and more, branching forth into
 numberless branches;
 Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of
 Democracy!
 Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers,
 Kanada, the snows; 10
 Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt
 stringing the huge oval lakes;
 Always the West, with strong native persons--the increasing density
 there--the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning
 invaders;
 All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all
 times,
 All characters, movements, growths--a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
 Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering;
 On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats
 wooding up;
 Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys
 of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke
 and Delaware;
 In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks,
 the hills--or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;
 In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the
 water, rocking silently;
 In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done--they
 rest standing--they are too tired; 20
 Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs
 play around;
 The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd--the farthest polar
 sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes;
 White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes;
 On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike
 midnight together;
 In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding--the howl of the
 wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the
 elk;
 In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake--in summer
 visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming;
 In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black
 buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree tops,
 Below, the red cedar, festoon'd with tylandria--the pines and
 cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and
 flat;
 Rude boats descending the big Pedee--climbing plants, parasites, with
 color'd flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees,
 The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low,
 noiselessly waved by the wind; 30
 The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark--the supper-fires, and
 the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
 Thirty or forty great wagons--the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from
 troughs,
 The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees--
 the flames--with the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling
 and rising;
 Southern fishermen fishing--the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's
 coast--the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery--the large
 sweep-seines--the windlasses on shore work'd by horses--the
 clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
 Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the
 incisions in the trees--There are the turpentine works,
 There are the negroes at work, in good health--the ground in all
 directions is cover'd with pine straw:
 --In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the
 forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking;
 In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence,
 joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse;
 On rivers, boatmen safely moor'd at night-fall, in their boats, under
 shelter of high banks,
 Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle--
 others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; 40
 Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing
 in the Great Dismal Swamp--there are the greenish waters, the
 resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress tree, and the
 juniper tree;
 --Northward, young men of Mannahatta--the target company from an
 excursion returning home at evening--the musket-muzzles all
 bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
 Children at play--or on his father's lap a youn