Not swarming states, nor
streets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor
capital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man--nor suffice
the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation
can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the
cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable
uses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur,
and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to trot back
generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty
and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the
mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the
opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired
in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the
antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride
of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and
all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of
geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and
realization of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and
simple. The American poets are to enclose old and new, for America
is the race of races. The expression of the American poet is to
be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or
descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more.
Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and
characters be illustrated, and that finish the verse.
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