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Walt Whitman - Years Of The Modern
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YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform`d!
Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty`s nation, but other
         nations preparing;
I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see
         the solidarity of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world`s
         stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts
         suitable to them closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm`d, and victorious, and very haughty,
         with Law on one side, and Peace on the other,
A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;          


I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give
         way 
—Never were such sharp questions ask`d as this day;
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonizes the
         Pacific, the archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
         wholesale engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all
         geography, all lands;
—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing
         under the seas?                                              


Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the
         globe?
Is humanity forming, en-masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow
         dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine
         war;
No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill the days and
         nights;
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
         pierce it, is full of phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;
This incredible rush and heat—this strange extatic fever of dreams,
         O years!
Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not
         whether I sleep or wake!)
The perform`d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind
         me,
The unperform`d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon
         me.
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