Years of the Modern.

YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d!

Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas;

I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations

preparing;

I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity

of

races;

I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage;

(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them

closed?)

I see Freedom, completely arm’d, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one

side,

and Peace on the other,

A stupendous Trio, all issuing forth against the idea of caste;

—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?

I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions;

I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;

I see the landmarks of European kings removed;

I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)

—Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day;

Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;

Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;

His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonizes the Pacific, the

archipelagoes;



With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war,

With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands;

—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas?

Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?

Is humanity forming, en-masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;

The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war;

No one knows what will happen next—such portents fill the days and nights;

Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of

phantoms;

Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me;

This incredible rush and heat—this strange extatic fever of dreams, O years!

Your dreams, O year, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!)

The perform’d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,

The unperform’d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.