The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably
the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto,
the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man
that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here
is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and
details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality
which for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the
trivial, unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and
groupings, and the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and
flowing breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance.
One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter,
and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the
orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men beget children
upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the genius
of the United States is not best or most in its executives or
legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or
churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors--but
always most in the common people, south, north, west, east, in all its
States, through all its mighty amplitude. The largeness of the
nation, however, were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and
generosity of the spirit of the citizen.
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