American Feuillage by Walt Whitman — Read

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-breathed Cuba! / Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea -- inseparable with the slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas! / The area the eighty-third year of these States[1] -- 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, travellers, Canada, the snows; / 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;