or by the divinity of his mouth or by the shaping of his
great hands ... and all that is well thought or done this day on any
part of the surface of the globe ... or on any of the wandering stars
or fixed stars by those there as we are here ... or that is henceforth
to be well thought or done by you whoever you are, or by any
one--these singly and wholly inured at their time and inure now and
will inure always to the identities from which they sprung or shall
spring ... Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The world
does not so exist ... no parts palpable or impalpable so exist ... no
result exists now without being from its long antecedent result,
and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest
mentionable spot coming a bit nearer the beginning than any other
spot.... Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the
greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is
not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways,
puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has
no particular sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from
the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the
present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no
possible forgiveness or deputed atonement ... knows that the young man
who composedly perilled his life and lost it has done exceeding well
for himself, while the man who has not perilled his life and retains
to old age in riches and ease has perhaps achieved nothing for himself
worth mentioning ... and that only that person has no great prudence
to learn who has learnt to prefer real longlived things, and favors
body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect assuredly following
the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting
to meet him again--and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever
neither hurries or avoids death.

The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If
he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
tides ... and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to
himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his
Semitic muscle into its merits and demerits ... and if he be not
himself the age transfigured ... and if to him is not opened the
eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and
processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which i