The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist—all these underlie the maker of poems.
5.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you, to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war,
peace, behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and everything else,
They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty—they are sought,
For ever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain,
love-sick.
They prepare for death—yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;
Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to
learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep through the ceaseless rings,
and never be quiet again.
TO A HISTORIAN.
You who celebrate bygones:
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has
exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers,
and priests.
I, habitué of the Alleghanies, treating man as he is in himself, in his own
rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, the great
pride of man in himself;
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be;
I project the history of the future.
FIT AUDIENCE.
1.
Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless:
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
2.
Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?