Hating, loving, killing, lying--
A vast electrical chain
Running through tradition, and auroral history,
Up through the twilights,
And blazing noons,
Through vanishing and returning twilights,
Through azure nights of stars--
Epochs of civilization--
Unto the calmer glory,
Unto the settled days,
Unto the noble men--
_Nunc formosissimus annus!_

Thus do I, flinging curiously the webs of fancy
Athwart the time-gulfs, and the ages,
Reconcile, after a kind, the primitive savage of America
With the wonderful genealogies--
Upsprung from the vital sap
Of the great life-tree, Igdrasil!
Thick and populous nations
Heavily bending its branches,
Each in its autumn time of one or two thousand years,
Like ripe fruits, fully developed and perfected,
From the germ whence they proceeded;
Nourished by strong saps of vitality,
By the red, rich blood of matured centuries,
By passionate Semitic sunlights;
Beautiful as the golden apples of the Hesperides!
Radiating, also, a divine beauty,
The flower-blossom and the aroma,
The final music, of a ripe humanity,
Whereof each particular nation
Was in its way and turn
The form and the expression,

Grand autumns were some of them!
Grand and beautiful, like that of Greece,
Whose glorious consummation always reminds me
Of moving statues, music, and richest painting and architecture:
Her landscapes shimmering in golden fire-mists,
Which hang over the wondrously colored woods,
In a dreamy haze of splendor;
Revealing arched avenues, and tiny glades,
Cool, quiet spots, and dim recesses,
Green swards, and floral fairy lands,
Sweeping to the hilltops;
Illuminating the rivers in their gladsome course,
And the yellow shadows of the rolling marshes,
And the cattle of the farmer as they stand knee-deep
Switching their tails by the shore;
Lighting up the singing faces,
The sweet, laughing, singing faces,
Of the merry, playful brooks,
Now running away over shallows,
Now into gurgling eddies;
Now under fallen trees,
Past bea