Skip to main content

Unnamed Lands.

Part of the cluster AUTUMN RIVULETS.

UNNAMED LANDS.

NATIONS ten thousand years before these States, and many times  
 ten thousand years before these States,
Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and  
 travel'd their course and pass'd on,
What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes  
 and nomads,
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others, What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions, What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and  
 phrenology,
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of  
 death and the soul,
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish  
 and undevelop'd,
Not a mark, not a record remains—and yet all remains.
O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any  
 more than we are for nothing,
  [ begin page 289 ]ppp.01663.295.jpg I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as  
 much as we now belong to it.
Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand, Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm, Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects, Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen, Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,  
 laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,  
 libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone? Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone? Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves? I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed  
 lands, every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible  
 to us,
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out  
 of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of  
 them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or  
 of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,  
 games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,  
 counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there, I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed  
 lands.

Part of the cluster AUTUMN RIVULETS.

Back to top