I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book — but the printer and the
     printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs — but your wife or friend close
     and solid in your arms?
The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her
     turrets — but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture — but the host
     and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there — yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history — but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology — but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between
     ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five
     thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting
     the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with
     sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt
     and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas
     admirant, minding the Koran,

Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and
     knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified,
     knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting
     patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like
     till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement
     and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk
     like a man leaving charges before a journey.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd,
     atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt,
     despair and unbelief.

How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts
     of blood!

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any,
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all
     precisely the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

Each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd,
     not a single one can it fail.

It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew
     back and was never seen again,

Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it
     with bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish
     koboo call'd the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to
     slip in,
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of
     the earth,
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of
     myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.

It is time to explain myself — let us stand up.