{ "id": "walt-whitman/song-of-the-broad-axe", "title": "Song of the Broad-Axe", "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": 88, "container": null, "epigraph": null, "first_published": { "year": 1856, "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1856)", "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1856 Fowler & Wells edition (ppp.00237). 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://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00237" ] }, "source": { "kind": "standard-ebooks", "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass", "file": "song-of-the-broad-axe.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": 254, "n_stanzas": 30, "n_parts": 12, "longest_line_chars": 132, "max_indent": 0 }, "site_ready": true, "parts": [ { "ordinal": "1", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 0, 2 ] }, { "ordinal": "2", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 2, 3 ] }, { "ordinal": "3", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 3, 4 ] }, { "ordinal": "4", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 4, 8 ] }, { "ordinal": "5", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 8, 10 ] }, { "ordinal": "6", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 10, 13 ] }, { "ordinal": "7", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 13, 15 ] }, { "ordinal": "8", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 15, 21 ] }, { "ordinal": "9", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 21, 25 ] }, { "ordinal": "10", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 25, 28 ] }, { "ordinal": "11", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 28, 29 ] }, { "ordinal": "12", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 29, 30 ] } ], "stanzas": [ [ { "text": "Weapon shapely, naked, wan,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Head from the mother’s bowels drawn,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Resting the grass amid and upon,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To be lean’d and to lean on.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are lands of pine and oak,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are lands of gold,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lands of iron⁠—lands of the make of the axe.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for a garden,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends, and the cutting away of masts,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion’d houses and barns,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The remember’d print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset anywhere,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day’s work,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they were prepared,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curv’d limbs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The hook’d arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The echoes resounding through the vacant building;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log shaping it toward the shape of a mast,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The butter-color’d chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack’d square,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders and their execution,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors if the fire smoulders under them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his thumb,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sack of an old city in its time,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The power of personality just or unjust.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Muscle and pluck forever!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What invigorates life invigorates death,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the dead advance as much as the living advance,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the future is no more uncertain than the present,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And nothing endures but personal qualities.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "What do you think endures?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Do you think a great city endures?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steamships?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Away! these are not to be cherish’d for themselves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The show passes, all does well enough of course,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All does very well till one flash of defiance.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor the place of the most numerous population.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the city stands that is belov’d by these, and loves them in return and understands them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor and whatnot, are agents for pay,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There the great city stands.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man’s or woman’s look!", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "When he or she appears materials are overaw’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The dispute on the soul stops,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid away.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "What is your money-making now? what can it do now?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What is your respectability now?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where are your jibes of being now?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where are your cavils about the soul now?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for all the forbidding appearance,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There is the mine, there are the miners,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d, the hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What always served and always serves is at hand.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustani,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose relics remain in Central America,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and the druids,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover’d hills of Scandinavia,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral tribes and nomads,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the long distant Celt, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the making of those for war,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For the medieval ages and before the medieval ages,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I see the European headsman,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He stands mask’d, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And leans on a ponderous axe.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "(Whom have you slaughter’d lately European headsman?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown’d ladies, impeach’d ministers, rejected kings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "(Mind you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I see the blood wash’d entirely away from the axe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Both blade and helve are clean,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp no more the necks of queens.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race, the newest, largest race.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "(America! I do not vaunt my love for you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I have what I have.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The axe leaps!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The solid forest gives fluid utterances,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They tumble forth, they rise and form,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hut, tent, landing, survey,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and whatnot,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that neighbors them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly gatherings, the characters and fun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by the Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in many a bay and by-place,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride’s bed,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe’s cradle,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day’s work.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the prisoner’s place in the court-room, and of him or her seated in the place,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the liquor-bar lean’d against by the young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking footsteps,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion’d arms,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d crowd, the dangling of the rope.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The door passing the dissever’d friend flush’d and in haste,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The door that admits good news and bad news,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The door whence the son left home confident and puff’d up,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence, diseas’d, broken down, without innocence, without means.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Her shape arises,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal’d from her,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She is the best belov’d, it is without exception, she has no reason to fear and she does not fear,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She is silent, she is possess’d of herself, they do not offend her,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She too is a law of Nature⁠—there is no law stronger than she is.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The main shapes arise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes ever projecting other shapes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of turbulent manly cities,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.", "indent": 0 } ] ] }