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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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OLD CHANTS.
| AN ancient song, reciting, ending, |
| Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All, |
| Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee, |
| Accept for me, thou saidst, the elder ballads, |
| And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet. |
| (Of many debts incalculable, |
| Haply our New World's chieftest debt is to old poems.) |
| Ever so far back, preluding thee, America, |
| Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia, |
| The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian, |
The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Naza-
rene,
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View Page 415
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| The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, |
| Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur, |
| The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen, |
| The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds, |
| Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds, |
The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays,
plays,
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| Shakspere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson, |
| As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences, |
| The great shadowy groups gathering around, |
| Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee, |
Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous
hand and word, ascending,
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Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent
with their music,
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| Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them, |
| Thou enterest at thy entrance porch. |
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