Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content, Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars, Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire, Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life, Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only, Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
These demanding to have them, ( tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack'd by the war-strife,) These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city, Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up, Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever faces; ( O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for. )
Keep your splendid silent sun, Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods, Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets — give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! Give me interminable eyes — give me women — give me comrades and lovers by the thousand! Let me see new ones every day — let me hold new ones by the hand every day! Give me such shows — give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching — give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! ( The soldiers in companies or regiments — some starting away, flush'd and reckless, Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied! The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torchlight procession! The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants, Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, ( even the sight of the wounded,) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
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