The born disciple of an elder time,
(To me sufficient, friendlier than the new,)
Who in my blood feel motions of the Past,
I thank benignant nature most for this,—­ 570
A force of sympathy, or call it lack
Of character firm-planted, loosing me
From the pent chamber of habitual self
To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought,
Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that,
And through imagination to possess,
As they were mine, the lives of other men. 
This growth original of virgin soil,
By fascination felt in opposites,
Pleases and shocks, entices and perturbs. 580
In this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid,
This backwoods Charlemagne of empires new,
Whose blundering heel instinctively finds out
The goutier foot of speechless dignities,
Who, meeting Caesar’s self, would slap his back,
Call him ‘Old Horse,’ and challenge to a drink,
My lungs draw braver air, my breast dilates
With ampler manhood, and I front both worlds,
Of sense and spirit, as my natural fiefs,
To shape and then reshape them as I will. 590
It was the first man’s charter; why not mine? 
How forfeit? when, deposed in other hands?

Thou shudder’st, Ovid?  Dost in him forebode
A new avatar of the large-limbed Goth,
To break, or seem to break, tradition’s clue. 
And chase to dreamland back thy gods dethroned? 
I think man’s soul dwells nearer to the east,
Nearer to morning’s fountains than the sun;
Herself the source whence all tradition sprang,
Herself at once both labyrinth and clue, 600
The miracle fades out of history,
But faith and wonder and the primal earth
Are born into the world with every child. 
Shall this self-maker with the prying eyes,
This creature disenchanted of respect
By the New World’s new fiend, Publicity,
Whose testing thumb leaves everywhere its smutch,
Not one day feel within himself the need
Of loyalty to better than himself,
That shall ennoble him with the upward look? 610
Shall he not catch the Voice that wanders earth,
With spiritual summons, dreamed or heard,
As sometimes, just ere sleep seals up the sense,
We hear our mother call from deeps of Time,
And, waking, find it vision,—­none the less
The benediction bides, old skies return,
And that unreal thing, preeminent,
Makes air and dream of all we see and feel? 
Shall he divine no strength unmade of votes,
Inward, impregnable, found soon as sought, 620
Not cognizable of sense, o’er sense supreme? 
Else were he desolate as none before. 
His holy places may not be of stone,
Nor made with hands, yet fairer far than aught
By artist feigned or pious ardor reared,
Fit altars for who guards inviolate
God’s chosen seat, the sacred form of man. 
Doubtless his church will be no hospital
For superannuate forms and mumping shams,