You say that “literary excellence is identical with publishing availability”! I tell you that they are as far apart—why, that they are just exactly this far apart—as far as what mankind likes is from what mankind ought to like.
And you ask the man of Genius to cringe and tremble before the standard of what the reading public likes! You ask him to tame the frenzy of his inspiration, to pull your pleasure-carriages with his wingèd steed! He shall be no more the seer and the prophet and the leader—he shall be mountebank and public-entertainer.
And you call yourself civilized! O God!
And the poet! Again the poet! Is he not vital to your society? Is he not, in the last analysis, the lawmaker, the law-enforcer—this seeker, this inspirer, this man with the new vision of right? I look at this society—body enough I see, bone and muscle, and a good, large, capable stomach. Brain enough I see, too, or nearly enough; but Soul? Soul? Who will dare to tell me that there is Soul enough? And your poet—why, he is your Soul! He is the man who fills the millions with the breath of life, who makes the whole vast machine a living, rejoicing, beautiful thing. He—every noble impulse that you have has come originally from him—the memory of his words thrill in the hearts of men—pupils gather to study them—tired hearts seek them for refreshment—they grow and they fill all the earth—and never through the centuries do they die! They blossom into noble impulses, into new movements,—into reforms that reach down to the lowest wretches of the gutter, who never even heard of a poet. Why, they have reached to the very dogs, that are beaten less than they were.
And what is it that makes civilization in the end? What is it that the world really honors in the end? You Americans, you who love your country, you who believe in your country's institutions, who believe that your country holds in her womb the future of mankind! You who want the world to believe that!—how are you going to get the world to believe that? Is it—poor, impotent, foolish creatures—by covering your land until it is a maze of twenty-story office buildings? By lining it with railroads six feet apart?—Do you not know that this very hour the reason why Europe does not believe in America is that it has not a man to sing its Soul? That it has been a century in the eyes of the world, and has not yet brought forth one single poet or thinker of the first rank?
The poet! And I sought to be that man, my heart burned to sing that song! And look at me!