{
 "id": "walt-whitman/a-broadway-pageant",
 "title": "A Broadway Pageant",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 101,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "a-broadway-pageant.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 81,
  "n_stanzas": 15,
  "n_parts": 3,
  "longest_line_chars": 116,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [
  {
   "ordinal": "1",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    0,
    3
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "2",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    3,
    10
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "3",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    10,
    15
   ]
  }
 ],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ride to-day through Manhattan.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love spit their salutes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the wharves, thicken with colors,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the façades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves forward visible,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands of years answers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Superb-faced Manhattan!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To us, my city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To-day our Antipodes comes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The Originatress comes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The race of Brahma comes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lithe and silent the Hindu appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in the pageant-procession.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Geography, the world, is in it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The coast you henceforth are facing⁠—you Libertad! from your Western golden shores,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse are curiously here,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes, all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From Tibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from Malaysia,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and are seiz’d by me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant the world on my Western sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea-islands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races reborn, refresh’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lives, works resumed⁠—the object I know not⁠—but the old, the Asiatic renew’d as it must be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And you Libertad of the world!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her eldest son to you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ring is circled, the journey is done,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The box-lid is but perceptibly open’d, nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you are all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending messages over the archipelagoes to you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for you, for reasons?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "They are justified, they are accomplish’d, they shall now be turn’d the other way also, to travel toward you thence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake Libertad.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}