5 PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! WALT WHITMAN Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes? For we cannot tarry here; We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! O you youths, Western youths, 10 So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers! Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? 15 We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers! 20 All the past we leave behind, We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers! We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers! 5 10 We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within, We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers! Colorado men are we, From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers! From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd, All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! O resistless, restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! 15 OI mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers! NOTES AND QUESTIONS For Biography see page 445. Discussion. 1. Whom does the poet address in the first stanza? 2. What does he ask the pioneers to have ready? 3. Why cannot they "tarry here"? 4. How does the poet characterize the "western youths"? 5. Why must the pioneers "take up the task eternal"? 6. What new world do they enter upon? 7. Mention some of the tasks that the pioneers must do. 8. Where do these pioneers come from? 9. Why does the poet mourn and yet exult? 10. Why would the motto mentioned on page 295 be a good one for the pioneers? 11. Find in the Glossary the meaning of: pioneer; primeval; vexing; sierras. Library Reading. America at Work, Husband; The Boy's Book of New Inventions, Manle; The Land We Live In, Price. Suggestions for Theme Topics. 1. In an imaginary conversation with Walt Whitman tell him what America is doing today to carry out the ideals he expressed in the fourth and fifth stanzas. 2. Pioneers of today the aeronaut; the submarine seaman. 3. Luther Burbank, a pioneer. 4. Marconi, a pioneer. 5. Thomas A. Edison, a pioneer. Б THE BEANFIELD* HENRY D. THOREAU Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half chiefly with beans, but a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was 10 the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor 15 all summer-to make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? *See Silent and Oral Reading, page 40. I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the 5 most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and, most of all, woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, 10 and go forward to meet new foes. I planted about two acres and a half of upland. Before any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had gotten above the scrub-oaks, while all the dew was on-I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on15 I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my beanfield and to throw dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. The sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and for20 ward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a scrub-oak copse where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened their tints by the time I had made another round. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil 25 about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass-this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or hired men, 30 or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. It was a singular experience, that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and thrashing, and picking over, and selling them—the 85 last was the hardest of all-I might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various 5 kinds of weeds. That's Roman wormwood-that's pigweedthat's sorrel-that's piper-grass-have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fiber in the shade; if you do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, 10 but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, 15 fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. My farm outgoes for the season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72. I got twelve bushels of beans and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything. My 20 whole income from the farm was Deducting the outgoes. There are left $23.44 14.721 8.711 This is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of June, in 25 rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh, round, and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when 80 the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all, harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by this means. 30 |