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ou build for mankind I build for you, O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision and science, Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future. (Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)

9 I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, I heard the voice arising demanding bards, By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account, That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, 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.

(Soul of love and tongue of fire! Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world! Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)

10 Of these States 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 proportion, 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, (Nature accepts him absolutely,) He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round 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.

For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals, For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders, The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign 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.)

11 For the great Idea, That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

Songs of stern defiance ever ready, Songs of the rapid arming and the march, The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know, Warlike flag of the great Idea.

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping! I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting, I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight--O the hard-contested fight! The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles--the hurtled balls scream, The battle-front forms amid the smoke--the volleys pour incessant from the line, Hark, the ringing word Charge!--now the tussle and the furious maddening yells, Now the corpses tumble curl’d upon the ground, Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you, Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)

12 Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in the States? The place is august, the terms obdurate.

Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind, He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself, He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and stern questions.

Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America? Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men? Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and objects? Have you consider’d the organic compact of the first day of the first year of Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners, ratified by the States, and read by Washington at the head of the army? Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution? Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy? Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach? Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities? Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole People? Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion? Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself? Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States? 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 not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship? Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?--Is the good old cause in it? Has it not dangled long 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? Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union in that secession war? Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere amanuenses? Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face? What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas? 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 finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, in