Publisher: Poemhunter com The World's Poetry Archive

323
www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait
behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 80
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep--you have done your
work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the
studious; 90
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on
our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers! 100
Till with sound of trumpet,
324
www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Far, far off the day-break call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it
wind;
Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O
pioneers.
Walt Whitman
325
www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Poem Of Remembrance For A Girl Or A Boy
YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights,
life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States,
signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by
Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders,--Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward
America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be
nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me. 10
Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the
hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and
freewomen, amicably joined.
Recall ages--One age is but a part--ages are but a part;
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow
of things is great,
And there is another paradox.
Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea
of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.
Anticipate the best women;
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to
spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless,
just the same as a boy.
Anticipate your own life--retract with merciless power,
Shirk nothing--retract in time--Do you see those errors, diseases,
weaknesses, lies, thefts?
326
www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Do you see that lost character?--Do you see decay, consumption, rum-
drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation? 20
Do you see death, and the approach of death?
Walt Whitman