It is well—­against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,
But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion’s sake,
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
    life of the earth,
Any more than such are to religion.

9
What do you seek so pensive and silent? 
What do you need camerado? 
Dear son do you think it is love?

Listen dear son—­listen America, daughter or son,
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it
    satisfies, it is great,
But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and
    provides for all.

10 Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion, The following chants each for its kind I sing.

My comrade! 
For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising
    inclusive and more resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.

Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,
Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we
    know not of,
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,
These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.

Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes—­equalities!  O divine average! 
Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon, or setting,
Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,
I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and
    cheerfully pass them forward.

     11
As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in
    the briers hatching her brood.

I have seen the he-bird also,
I have paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and
    joyfully singing.

And while I paus’d it came to me that what he really sang for was
    not there only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

     12
Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and
    joyfully singing.

Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,
For those who belong here and those to come,
I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger
    and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,
And your songs outlaw’d offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes,
    and carry you with me the same as any.