No More Learning

Dear son! do you think it is love?

Listen, dear son--listen, America, daughter or son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess--and yet it
satisfies--it is great;
But there is something else very great--it makes the whole coincide;
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and
provides for all.


11.

Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,
The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.

My comrade!
For you, to share with me, two greatnesses--and a third one, rising
inclusive and more resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion.

Melange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;
Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we know
not of;
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;
These selecting--these, in hints, demanded of me.

Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,
And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O warblings under the sun--ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither,
I take to your reckless and composite chords--I add to them, and cheerfully
pass them forward.


12.

As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the
briars, hatching her brood.
I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully
singing.

And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not
there only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.


13.

Democracy!
Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.
Ma femme!
For the brood beyond us and of us,
For those who belong here, and those to come,
I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and
haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way,
And your songs, outlawed offenders--for I scan you with kindred eyes, and
carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,--
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and
is not dropped by death.

I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all--and I will be the bard
of personality;
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the
other;
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present--and can be
none in the future;
And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned to
beautiful results--and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful
than death;
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as
profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts;
But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with
reference to ensemble:
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all
days;
And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference
to the soul;
Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no
one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul.


14.