Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

For these, and the like, their own voices! For these, space ahead!
Others take finish, but the republic is ever constructive, and ever keeps vista;
Others adorn the past—but you, O, days of the present, I adorn you!
O days of the future, I believe in you!
O America, because you build for mankind, I build for you!
O well-beloved stone-cutters! I lead them who plan with decision and science,
I lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.

Bravas to states whose semitic impulses send wholesome children to the next age!
But damn that which spends itself on flaunters and dallyers, with no thought of the stains, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing!

By great bards only can series of peoples and States be fused into the compact organism of one nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account,
That only holds men together which is living principles, as the hold of the limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants.

Of all races and eras, These States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.

Of mankind, the poet is the equable man,
Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land
He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking,
In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,
In war he is the best backer of the war—he fetches artillery as good as the engineer’s, he can make every word he speaks draw blood;
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
He is no arguer, he is judgment,
He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.

An American literat fills his own place,
He justifies science—did you think the demonstrable less divine than the mythical?
He stands by liberty according to the compact of the first day of the first year of These States,
He concentres in the real body and soul, and in the pleasure of things,
He possesses the superiority of genuineness over fiction and romance;
As he emits himself, facts are showered over with light,
The day-light is lit with more volatile light—the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold,
Each precise object, condition, combination, process, exhibits a beauty—the multiplication-table its, old age its, the carpenter’s trade its, the grand-opera its,
The huge-hulled clean-shaped Manhattan clipper at sea, under steam or full sail, gleams with unmatched beauty,
The national circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs,
The commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs.

Of the idea of perfect individuals, the idea of These States, their bards walk in advance, leaders of leaders,
The attitudes of them cheer up slaves and horrify despots.

Without extinction is liberty! Without retrograde is equality!
They live in the feelings of young men, and the best women,
Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for liberty!

Language-using controls the rest;
Wonderful is language!
Wondrous the English language, language of live men,
Language of ensemble, powerful language of resistance,
Language of a proud and melancholy stock, and of all who aspire,
Language of growth, faith, self-esteem, rudeness, justice, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, exactitude, courage,
Language to well-nigh express the inexpressible,
Language for the modern, language for America.

Who would use language to America may well prepare himself, body and mind,
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe, himself,
He shall surely be questioned beforehand by me with many and stern questions.

Who are you that would talk to America?
Have you studied out my land, its idioms and men?
Have you learned the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship, of my land? its substratums and objects?
Have you considered the organic compact of the first day of the first year of the independence of The States?
Have you possessed yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at naught for life and death?
Do you see who have left described processes and poems behind them, and assumed new ones?
Are you faithful to things? Do you teach whatever the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, angers, excesses, crimes, teach?
Have you sped through customs, laws, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions?
Are you not of some coterie? some school or religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating to life itself?
Have you possessed yourself with the spirit of the maternity of These States?
Have you sucked the nipples of the breasts of the mother of many children?
Have you too the old, ever-fresh, forbearance and impartiality?
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the last-born? little and big? and for the errant?
What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
Have you imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship?
Is it a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?
Has it never dangled at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies’ lands?
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
Does it answer universal needs? Will it improve manners?
Can your performance face the open fields and the sea-side?
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, nobility, meanness—to appear again in my strength, gait, face?
Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not amanuenses?
Does it meet modern discoveries, calibers, facts, face to face?
Does it respect me? America? the soul? to-day?
What does it mean to me? to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago, Canada, Arkansas? the planter, Yankee, Georgian, native, immigrant, sailors, squatters, old States, new States?
Does it encompass all The States, and the unexceptional rights of all men and women, the genital impulse of The States?
Does it see behind the apparent custodians, the real custodians, standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, western men, southerners, significant alike in their apathy and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see what befals and has always befallen each temporiser, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever asked anything of America?
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strewed with the dust of skeletons?
By the road-side others disdainfully tossed?