by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products!
Language: English
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products! Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All, With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch’d you. Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well! The Mother of All -- yet here, as ever, she watches you. Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest, Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters, The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements: Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes, The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines, The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw -- the nimble work of the patent pitch-fork; Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser. Beneath thy look, O Maternal, With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest. All gather, and all harvest; (Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security; Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.)
About the headline (FAQ)
Confirmed with Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Philadelphia: David McKay, c1900.
Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), no title, appears in Leaves of Grass, in A Carol of Harvest, for 1867, no. 12 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2022-04-18
Line count: 23
Word count: 161