< Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu
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180
Leaves of Grass.
:Of how many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity;
- How few see the arrived models, the Athletes, The States—or see freedom or spirituality—or hold any faith in results,
- (But I see the Athletes—and I see the results glorious and inevitable—and they again leading to other results;)
- How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them,
- How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on;
- How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun;
- How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun;
- And how The States are complete in themselves—And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward,
- And how these of mine, and of The States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions,
- And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses too, serve—and how every fact serves,
- And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.
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