5
The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d
    wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the
    anchor-lifters of the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops
    selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where
    money is plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.

Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
Where the city stands that is belov’d by these, and loves them in
    return and understands them,
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of
    elected persons,
Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of
    death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside
    authority,
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,
    Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
    themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
There the great city stands.

     6
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! 
How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
    man’s or woman’s look!

All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,
When he or she appears materials are overaw’d,
The dispute on the soul stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid away.

What is your money-making now? what can it do now? 
What is your respectability now? 
What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now? 
Where are your jibes of being now? 
Where are your cavils about the soul now?

     7
A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for
    all the forbidding appearance,
There is the mine, there are the miners,
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d, the hammersmen
    are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
What always served and always serves is at hand.