Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left
    wafted hither,
I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among
    it,)
Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve
    more than it deserves,
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my place with my own day here.

Here lands female and male,
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the
    flame of materials,
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow'd,
The ever-tending, the finalè of visible forms,
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,
Yes here comes my mistress the soul.

The soul,
Forever and forever — longer than soil is brown and solid —
longer than water ebbs and flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be
    the most spiritual poems,
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my
    soul and of immortality.

I will make a song for these States that no one State may
    under any circumstances be subjected to another State,
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and
    by night between all the States, and between any two of
    them,
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of
    weapons with menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
And a song make I of the One form'd out of all,
The fang'd and glittering One including and over all,
(However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

I will acknowledge contemporary lands,
I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute
     courteously every city large and small,
And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is
     heroism upon land and sea,
And I will report all heroism from an American point of
     view.

I will sing the song of companionship,
I will show what alone must finally compact these,
I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love,
     indicating it in me,
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were
     threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering
     fires,
I will give them complete abandonment,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,
For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and
     joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
I advance from the people in their own spirit,
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,
I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is — and
     I say there is in fact no evil,
(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land
     or to me, as any thing else.)

I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a
     religion, I descend into the arena,
(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the
     winner's pealing shouts,
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above
     every thing.)

Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for
     religion's sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how
     certain the future is.