} Who Learns My Lesson Complete?

Who learns my lesson complete? 
Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,
    clerk, porter and customer,
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy—­draw nigh and commence;
It is no lesson—­it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.

The great laws take and effuse without argument,
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.

I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons
    of things,
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

I cannot say to any person what I hear—­I cannot say it to myself—­
    it is very wonderful.

It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so
    exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or
    the untruth of a single second,
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
    nor ten billions of years,
Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans
    and builds a house.

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and
    how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,
And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of
    summers and winters to articulate and walk—­all this is
    equally wonderful.

And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
    without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see
    each other, is every bit as wonderful.

And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to
    be true, is just as wonderful.

And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is
    equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
    wonderful.

} Tests

All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to
    analysis in the soul,
Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,
They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,
They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves,
    and touches themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far
    and near without one exception.

} The Torch

On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen’s group
    stands watching,
Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon,
The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,
Bearing a torch ablaze at the prow.