) That something is the All, and the idea of All, with the
accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant,
indestructible, sailing space forever, visiting every region, as a
ship the sea. And again lo! the pulsations in all matter, all spirit,
throbbing forever--the eternal beats, eternal systole and diastole
of life in things--wherefrom I feel and know that death is not the
ending, as was thought, but rather the real beginning--and that
nothing ever is or can be lost, nor ever die, nor soul, nor matter.
In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far, and make
great poems of death. The poems of life are great, but there must be
the poems of the purports of life, not only in itself, but beyond
itself. I have eulogized Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus,
Juvenal, Shakspere, &c., and acknowledged their inestimable value.
But, (with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects, of
the second-mention'd,) I say there must, for future and democratic
purposes, appear poets, (dare I to say so?) of higher class even than
any of those--poets not only possess'd of the religious fire and
abandon of Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud
characters as in Shakspere, but consistent with the Hegelian formulas,
and consistent with modern science. America needs, and the world
needs, a class of bards who will, now and ever, so link and tally the
rational physical being of man, with the ensembles of time and space,
and with this vast and multiform show, Nature, surrounding him, ever
tantalizing him, equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as to
essentially harmonize, satisfy, and put at rest.
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