nothing too far off ... the stars not too far off.  In war he is the most deadly force of the war.  Who recruits him recruits horse and foot ... he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew.  If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it ... he can make every word he speaks draw blood.  Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he never stagnates.  Obedience does not master him, he masters it.  High up out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light ... he turns the pivot with his finger ... he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily overtakes and envelopes them.  The time straying towards infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith ... he spreads out his dishes ... he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women.  His brain is the ultimate brain.  He is no arguer ... he is judgment.  He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith.  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things.  In the talk on the soul and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is silent.  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement ... he sees eternity in men and women ... he does not see men or women as dreams or dots.  Faith is the antiseptic of the soul ... it pervades the common people and preserves them ... they never give up believing and expecting and trusting.  There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.  The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist....  The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him, but never the power of attack.  What is past is past.  If he does not expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is wanted.  The presence of the greatest poet conquers ... not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts.  Now he has passed that way see after him!  There is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell ... and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.

The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality.  If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe.  He is a seer ... he is individual ... he is complete in himself ... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.  He is not one of the chorus ... he does not stop for any regulation ... he is the president of regulation.  What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest.  Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight?  The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own and foreruns