Walt Whitman
Copyright 2004. Pat @ Close. All Rights Reserved.
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Leaves of Grass

A Walt Whitman Collection

Book II. Starting From Paumanok

Chapter XVI

On my way a moment I pause,
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
     harbinge glad and sublime,
And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines,
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds
     and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,
     Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the
     water and the land with names.