conspiracy to raise it
     upon the ruins of all the rest,
On and on to the grapple with it — Assassin! then your life or
     ours be the stake, and respite no more.

7

(Lo, high toward heaven, this day,
Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd,
I mark the new aureola around your head,
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
With war's flames and the lambent lightings playing,
And your port immovable where you stand,
With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and
     lifted fist,
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner
     utterly crush'd beneath you,
The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with
     his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,
The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do
     so much,
To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the
     earth,
An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)

8

Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and
     ever keeps vista,
Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn
     you,
O days of the future I believe in you — I isolate myself for
     your sake,
O America because you build for mankind I build for you,
O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with
     decision and science,
Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.
(Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next
     age!
But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the
     stain, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)

9

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,
I heard the voice arising demanding bards,
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States
     be fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is
     no account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living
     principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the
     fibres of plants.

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetica
     stuff most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and
     use them the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much
     as their poets shall.

(Soul of love and tongue of fire!
Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long
     barren, barren?)

10

Of these States the poet is the equable man,
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric,
     fail of their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion,
     neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants
     checking,

In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,
     thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture,
     arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul,
     health, immortality, government,
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery
     as good as the engineer's, he can make every word he
     speaks draw blood,
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his
     steady faith,
He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him
     absolutely,)
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round
     a helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and
     denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and
     women as dreams or dots.