tribes of red aborigines—­the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports or making landings on rocky coasts—­the first settlements north or south—­the rapid stature and muscle—­the haughty defiance of ’76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution ... the Union always surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable—­the perpetual coming of immigrants—­the wharf-hem’d cities and superior marine—­the unsurveyed interior—­the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers ... the free commerce—­the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging—­the endless gestation of new states—­the convening of Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts ... the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen ... the general ardor and friendliness and enterprise—­the perfect equality of the female with the male ... the large amativeness—­the fluid movement of the population—­the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery—­the Yankee swap—­the New York firemen and the target excursion—­the Southern plantation life—­the character of the northeast and of the northwest and southwest—­slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease.  For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new.  It is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic.  Its quality goes through these to much more.  Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the verse.  Not so the great psalm of the republic.  Here the theme is creative and has vista.  Here comes one among the well beloved stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.

Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest.  Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.  Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man.  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.  Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place is bad.  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less.  He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key.  He is the equalizer of his age and land ... he supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking.  If peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce—­lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—­federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by land and sea ... nothing too close,