subjects of poets.—­As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records!  As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical!  As if men do not make their mark out of any times!  As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages!  The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of full sized men or one full sized man unconquerable and simple.

The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races.  Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people.  To him the other continents arrive as contributions ... he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake.  His spirit responds to his country’s spirit ... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.  Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and St. Lawrence with the Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him.  The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him.  When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south.  He spans between them also from east to west and reflects what is between them.  On him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon ... and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp ... and forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from boughs and crackling in the wind ... and sides and peaks of mountains ... and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle.  To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother’s and father’s.  To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events—­of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines—­the