Is it a dream of mine that, in times to come, west, south, east,
north, will silently, surely arise a race of such poets, varied,
yet one in soul--nor only poets, and of the best, but newer, larger
prophets--larger than Judea's, and more passionate--to meet and
penetrate those woes, as shafts of light the darkness?
As I write, the last fifth of the nineteenth century is enter'd upon,
and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, what the
United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, to
their unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, education
by rote merely, great populousness and intellectual activity, is
the central, spinal reality, (or even the idea of it,) of such
a democratic band of-native-born-and-bred teachers, artists,
_litterateurs_, tolerant and receptive of importations, but entirely
adjusted to the West, to ourselves, to our own days, combinations,
differences, superiorities. Indeed, I am fond of thinking that the
whole series of concrete and political triumphs of the Republic are
mainly as bases and preparations for half a dozen future poets, ideal
personalities, referring not to a special class, but to the entire
people, four or five millions of square miles.
Long, long are the processes of the development of a nationality
Only to the rapt vision does the seen become the prophecy of the
unseen.[38] Democracy, so far attending only to the real, is not for
the real only, but the grandest ideal--to justify the modern by that,
and not only to equal, but to become by that superior to the past.
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