No More Learning

Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?
Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a
nomination and election? or with your wife and family?
Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful
maternal cares?
These also flow onward to others--you and I fly onward,
But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.

Your farm, profits, crops,--to think how engrossed you are!
To think there will still be farms, profits, crops--yet for you, of what
avail?


6.

What will be will be well--for what is is well;
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

The sky continues beautiful,
The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of
women with men, nor the pleasure from poems;
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of
houses--these are not phantasms--they have weight, form, location;
Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them
phantasms;
The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo--man and his life, and all the things of his life,
are well-considered.
You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely around
yourself;
Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, for ever and ever!


7.

It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father--it
is to identify you;
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should
be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.

The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the
pattern is systematic.

The preparations have every one been justified,
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments--the baton has
given the signal.

The guest that was coming--he waited long, for reasons--he is now housed;
He is one of those who are beautiful and happy--he is one of those that to
look upon and be with is enough.

The law of the past cannot be eluded,
The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
The law of the living cannot be eluded--it is eternal;
The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons--not one iota thereof can be
eluded.


8.

Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the
Atlantic side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all
through the Mississippi country, and all over the earth.

The great masters and kosmos are well as they go--the heroes and good-doers
are well,
The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and
distinguished, may be well,
But there is more account than that--there is strict account of all.

The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
The common people of Europe are not nothing--the American aborigines are
not nothing,
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing--the murderer or
mean person is not nothing,
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
The lowest prostitute is not nothing--the mocker of religion is not nothing
as he goes.


9.

I shall go with the rest--we have satisfaction,
I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us
changed,
I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and
past law,
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past
law,
For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.

And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed, and that
there is no life without satisfaction;
What is the earth?