Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/290

23.The old face of the mother of many children!
Whist! I am fully content.

24.Lulled and late is the smoke of the First Day
morning,
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and
the cat-brier under them.

25.I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white
froth and the water-blue.

26.Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is
clearer and more beautiful than the sky.

27.She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of
the farm-house,
The sun just shines on her old white head.

28.Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen.
Her grand-sons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters
spun it with the distaff and the
wheel.

29.The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and
does not wish to go.
The justified mother of men.