Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/190

11.

The thought of fruitage,
Of Death, (the life greater)—of seeds dropping into
the ground—of birth,
Of the steady concentration of America, inland,
upward, to impregnable and swarming places,
Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and the rest, are
to be,
Of what a few years will show there in Missouri,
Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the
rest,
Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation
for—and of what all the sights, North, South,
East and West, are;
Of the temporary use of materials for identity's
sake,
Of departing—of the growth of a mightier race
than any yet,
Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by
these shores,
Of California—of Oregon—and of me journeying
hence to live and sing there;
Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between
it and the spinal river,
Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine,
Of all sloping down there where the fresh free-giver,
the mother, the Mississippi flows—and
Westward still;