gly,
Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!"

* * * * *

"The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out."

He says the best of life

"Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"

and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--

"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
the theory of the earth,
No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
earth."

No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
these and kindred passages:--

"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
poems, the Answerer,
(Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
for all its names.)

* * * * *

"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
of body, withdrawnness,
Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
else.
Th