Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breath of the universe,

Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

XIII

Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,

To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of

nights,

To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,

Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys;

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,

To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you however long, but it stretches

and waits for you;

To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,

To see no possession but you may possess it

enjoying all without labor or purchase-abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it;

To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens, To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,

To carry buildings and streets with you afterwards wherever you go,

To gather the minds of man out of their brains as you encounter them-to gather the love out of their hearts,

To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, To know the universe itself as a road

roads

as roads for travelling souls.

as many

XIV

The Soul travels;

The body does not travel as much as the soul; The body has just as great a work as the soul; and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.

All parts away for the progress of souls; All religion, all solid things, arts, governments,— all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of Souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and

sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,

Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,

Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,

They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;

But I know that they go toward the best-toward something great.

XV

Allons! whoever you are! come forth!

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Allons! out of the dark confinement!

It it useless to protest-I know all, and expose it.

Behold, through you as bad as the rest,

Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,

Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and trimm'd faces,

Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession;

Another self, a duplicate of everyone, skulking and hiding it goes,

Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,

In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,

Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,

Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,

Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the rib. bons and artificial flowers,

Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,

Speaking of anything else, but never of itself.

XVI

Allons! through struggles and wars!

The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?

What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? nature?

Now understand me well-It is provided in the essence of things, that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle-I nourish active rebellion;

He going with me must go well arm'd;

He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

XVII

Allons! the road is before us!

It is safe-I have tried it-my own feet have tried it well.

Allons! be not detain'd!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!

Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!

Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado! I give you my hand!

I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel
with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Walt Whitman

And makes my blood to quicken and makes my flesh to pine.

The mountains are calling; the winds wake the pine.

Past the quivering poplars that tell of water near The long road is sleeping, the white road is clear.

Yet scent and touch can summon, afar from brook and tree,

The deep boom of surges, the grey waste of

sea.