I say this edifice is only to be fitly built by new literatures,
especially the poetic. I say a modern image-making creation is
indispensable to fuse and express the modern political and scientific
creations--and then the trinity will be complete.)
When I commenced, years ago, elaborating the plan of my poems, and
continued turning over that plan, and shifting it in my mind
through many years, (from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five,)
experimenting much, and writing and abandoning much, one deep purpose
underlay the others, and has underlain it and its execution ever
since--and that has been the religious purpose. Amid many changes,
and a formulation taking far different shape from what I at first
supposed, this basic purpose has never been departed from in the
composition of my verses. Not of course to exhibit itself in the old
ways, as in writing hymns or psalms with an eye to the church-pew, or
to express conventional pietism, or the sickly yearnings of devotees,
but in new ways, and aiming at the widest sub-bases and inclusions
of humanity, and tallying the fresh air of sea and land. I will see,
(said I to myself,) whether there is not, for my purposes as poet, a
religion, and a sound religious germenancy in the average human race,
at least in their modern development in the United States, and in
the hardy common fiber and native yearnings and elements, deeper and
larger, and affording more profitable returns, than all mere sects
or churches--as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature itself--a
germenancy that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost
unknown.
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