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 unmow’d grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat--give me serene-moving animals,
　　　teaching content; 5
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 undisturb’d;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d 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, reliev’d, recluse by myself,
　　　for my own ears only; 10
Give me solitude--give me Nature--give me again, O Nature, your
　　　primal sanities!

These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement,
　　　and rack’d 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, 15
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up;
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul--you give me
　　　forever faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)

2

Keep your splendid, silent sun; 20
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields 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! 25
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,
　　　flush’d and reckless;
Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks--young, yet very
　　　old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) 30
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
　　　torch-light procession!
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military
　　　wagons following; 35
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!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. 40