he
young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen ... the
general ardor and friendliness and enterprise--the perfect equality of
the female with the male ... the large amativeness--the fluid movement
of the population--the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving
machinery--the Yankee swap--the New York firemen and the target
excursion--the Southern plantation life--the character of the
northeast and of the northwest and southwest--slavery and the
tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition
to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of
tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the
American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect and
not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to
much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their
eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the verse. Not so
the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative and has
vista. Here comes one among the well beloved stonecutters and plans
with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of
the future where there are now no solid forms.

Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff
most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the
greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much
as their poets shall. Of all mankind the great poet is the equable
man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or
fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good and 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
and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land ... he
supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking. If peace
is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,
thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture
and the arts and commerce--lighting the study of man, the soul,
immortality--federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health,
freetrade, intertravel by land and sea ... nothing too close, nothing
too far off ... the stars not too far off. In war he is the most
deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot ...
he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew. If the
time becomes slothful and hea