Ah, Burne-Jones!
Paumanokides.
Tell them that I am considerably more than Beauty!
I, representing the bone and muscle and cartilage and adipose tissue and pluck of the Sierras, of California, of the double Carolinas, of the Granite State, and the Narragansett Bay State, and the Wooden Nutmeg State!
I, screaming with the scream of the bald-headed bird the eagle in the primitive woods of America my country, in the hundred and sixth year of these States!
Dear son, I have learned the secret of the Universe,
I learned it from my original bonne, the white-capped ocean,
I learned it from the Ninth-month Equinoctial, from the redwood tree, and the Civil War, and the hermit-thrush, and the telephone, and the Corliss engine,
The secret of the Universe is not Beauty, dear son, nor is it Art the perpetuator of Beauty,
The secret of the Universe is to admire one’s self.