To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod.
Part of the cluster DRUM-TAPS.
TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD.
TO the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last, (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,) In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and
vistas again to peace restored, To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the
South and the North, To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest my
songs, To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading
wide, [ begin page 255 ]ppp.01663.261.jpg To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable
air; And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges
mutely, The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end, But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.
Part of the cluster DRUM-TAPS.