Read "Pioneers! o Pioneers!" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
1. Come, my tan-faced children, / Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; / Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? / Pioneers! O pioneers!
2. For we cannot tarry here, / We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, / We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend. / Pioneers! O pioneers!
3. O you youths, Western youths, / So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, / Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
4. Have the elder races halted? / Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? / We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
5. All the past we leave behind; / We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world; / Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
6. We detachments steady throwing, / Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, / Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
7. We primeval forests felling, / We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within; / We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
8. Colorado men are we, / From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, / From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
9. From Nebraska, from Arkansas, / Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood / interveined; / All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
10. O resistless, restless race! / O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! / O I mourn and yet exult -- I am rapt with love for all, / Pioneers! O pioneers;
11. Raise the mighty mother mistress, / Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your / heads all,) / Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weaponed mistress, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
12. See, my children, resolute children, / By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter, / Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
13. On and on, the compact ranks, / With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled, / Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
14. O to die advancing on! / Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? / Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is filled, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
15. All the pulses of the world, / Falling in, they beat for us, with the Western movement beat; / Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
16. Life's involved and varied pageants, / All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, / All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, / Pioneers, O pioneers!
17. All the hapless silent lovers, / All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, / All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
18. I too with my soul and body, / We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, / Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
19. Lo! the darting, bowling orb! / Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets; / All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, / Pioneers! O pioneers!
20. These are of us, they are with us, / All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind, / We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, / Pioneers! O pioneers!