A great poem is no finish to a
man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could
sit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with
explanations, and realize, and be content and full? To no such
terminus does the greatest poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor
shelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells in
action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions
previously unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space
and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead
vacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos
--the elder encourages the younger and shows him how--they two shall
launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for
itself, and looks unabash'd on the lesser orbits of the stars, and
sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to
defend immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty,
or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in
America, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
brawny enough, and limber and full enough.
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