Manhattanese,
     Western men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy,
     and in the promptness of their love?

Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally
     befallen, each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist,
     infidel, who has ever ask'd any thing of
     America?
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons,
By the roadside others disdainfully toss'd.

13

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from poems
     pass away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of
     literature,
America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it
     or conceal from it, it is impassive enough,
Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,
If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them,
     there is no fear of mistake,
(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country
     absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it.)

He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who
     results sweetest in the long run,
The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;
In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native
     grand- opera, shipcraft, any craft,
He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original
     practical example.

Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on
     the streets,
People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive
     knowers,
There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is
     done,
Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual
     emergencies here,
Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall
     be superb,
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible
     power;
How dare you place any thing before a man?

14

Fall behind me States!
A man before all — myself, typical, before all.

Give me the pay I have served for,
Give to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the
     stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to
     others,
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and
     indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to
     nothing known or unknown,
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,
     and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by
     trees, stars, rivers,
Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my
     body,
Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd
     for others on the same terms,
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from
     every state,
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe
     his last,
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd,
     restored,
To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the
     taste of myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.

(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)

15

I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any
     one,
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments,
     theories,
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.

Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,
The American compact is altogether with individuals,
The only government is that which makes minute of
     individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one
     single individual — namely to You.