YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
 Your horizon rises--I see it parting away for more august dramas;
 I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation, but other
 nations preparing;
 I see tremendous entrances and exits--I see new combinations--I see
 the solidarity of races;
 I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's
 stage;
 (Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts
 suitable to them closed?)
 I see Freedom, completely arm'd, and victorious, and very haughty,
 with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
 A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
 --What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
 I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions; 10
 I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
 I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
 I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give
 way;)
 --Never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day;
 Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
 Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
 His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonizes the
 Pacific, the archipelagoes;
 With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
 wholesale engines of war,
 With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all
 geography, all lands;
 --What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing
 under the seas? 20
 Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the
 globe?
 Is humanity forming, en-masse?--for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow
 dim;
 The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine
 war;
 No one knows what will happen next--such portents fill the days and
 nights;
 Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
 pierce it, is full of phantoms;
 Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
 This incredible rush and heat--this strange extatic fever of dreams,
 O years!
 Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not
 whether I sleep or wake!)
 The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind
 me,
 The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon
 me. 30