It must in no respect ignore science or the modern, but inspire itself
with science and the modern. It must bend its vision toward the
future, more than the past. Like America, it must extricate itself
from even the greatest models of the past, and, while courteous to
them, must have entire faith in itself, and the products of its own
democratic spirit only. Like her, it must place in the van, and hold
up at all hazards, the banner of the divine pride of man in himself,
(the radical foundation of the new religion.) Long enough have the
People been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential,
bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to
no such poems. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant;
and then America will listen with pleased ears.
Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light at last, be
probably usher'd forth from any of the quarters currently counted on.
To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American poetic expression,
(eluding those highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes,
and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodox
publishers--causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted not
to chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely artificial
gossamer delicacy,) lies sleeping far away, happily unrecognized and
uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and critics of
the saloons, or the lecturers in the colleges--lies sleeping, aside,
unrecking itself, in some western idiom, or native Michigan or
Tennessee repartee, or stumpspeech--or in Kentucky or Georgia, or
the Carolinas--or in some slang or local song or allusion of the
Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore mechanic--or up in the
Maine woods--or off in the hut of the California miner, or crossing
the Rocky mountains, or along the Pacific railroad--or on the breasts
of the young farmers of the northwest, or Canada, or boatmen of
the lakes.
Pages:
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410