Entirely different and hitherto unknown Classes of men, being
authoritatively called for in imaginative literature, will certainly
appear. What is hitherto most lacking, perhaps most absolutely
indicates the future. Democracy has been hurried on through time by
measureless tides and winds, resistless as the revolution of the
globe, and as far-reaching and rapid. But in the highest walks of art
it has not yet had a single representative worthy of it anywhere upon
the earth.
Never had real bard a task more fit for sublime ardor and genius than
to sing worthily the songs these States have already indicated. Their
origin, Washington, '76, the picturesqueness of old times, the war
of 1812 and the sea-fights; the incredible rapidity of movement and
breadth of area--to fuse and compact the South and North, the East and
West, to express the native forms, situations, scenes, from Montauk to
California, and from the Saguenay to the Rio Grande--the working out
on such gigantic scales, and with such a swift and mighty play
of changing light and shade, of the great problems of man and
freedom,--how far ahead of the stereotyped plots, or gem-cutting, or
tales of love, or wars of mere ambition! Our history is so full of
spinal, modern, germinal subjects--one above all. What the ancient
siege of Illium, and the puissance of Hector's and Agamemnon's
warriors proved to Hellenic art and literature, and all art and
literature since, may prove the war of attempted secession of 1861-'65
to the future esthetics, drama, romance, poems of the United States.
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