Manhattan Faces by Walt Whitman

1. Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; / Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; / Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows; / Give me an arbour, give me the trellised grape; / Give me fresh corn and wheat -- give me serene-moving animals, teachin content; / Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the / Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; / Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk / undisturbed; / Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire; / Give me a perfect child -- give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, / a rural domestic life; / Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved, recluse by myself, for my / own ears only; / Give me solitude -- give me Nature -- give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! / -- These, demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and / racked by the war-strife, / These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, / While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; / Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets, / Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up, / Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul -- you give me for ever faces; / O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; / I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for.

2. Keep your splendid silent sun; / Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; / Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards; / Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-month bees hum. / Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless / along the _trottoirs_! / Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by / the thousand! / Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! / Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! / Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching -- give me the sound of the / trumpets and drums! / The soldiers in companies or regiments -- some starting away, flushed and reckless; / Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks -- young, yet very old, / worn, marching, noticing nothing; / -- Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! / O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! / The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! / The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion, for me! the torchlight / procession! / The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons following; / People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; / Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; / The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the / sight of the wounded; / Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus -- with varied chorus / and light of the sparkling eyes; / Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!