Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, UNNAMED LANDS, by WALT WHITMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

UNNAMED LANDS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Nations ten thousand years before these states, and many times ten thousand
Last Line: Unnamed lands.


Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many
times ten thousand years before these States,
Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew
up and travel'd their course and pass'd on,
What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what
pastoral tribes and nomads,
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,
What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought
of death and the soul,
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who
brutish and undevelop'd,
Not a mark, not a record remains -- and yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any
more than we are for nothing,
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every
bit as much as we now belong to it.

Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,
Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on
farms, laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces,
factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres,
wonderful monuments.

Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?

I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the
unnamed lands, every one exists this hour here or
elsewhere, invisible to us,
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life,
and out of What he or she did, felt, became, loved,
sinn'd, in life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations or any
person of them, any more than this shall be the end of
my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature,
products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons,
slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen
world, counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them thee,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those
unnamed lands.





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