No More Learning

Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you;
And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly
with you.

I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!

In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?
Why, these are the children of the antique, to justify it.


6.

Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted
hither:
I have perused it--own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)
Think nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than it
deserves;
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my place, with my own day, here.

Here lands female and male;
Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world--here the flame of
materials;
Here spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,
Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.


7.

The SOUL!
For ever and for ever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
water ebbs and flows.

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most
spiritual poems;
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of
immortality.
I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any
circumstances be subjected to another State;
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night
between all the States, and between any two of them;
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with
menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:
And a song make I, of the One formed out of all;
The fanged and glittering one whose head is over all;
Resolute, warlike one, including and over all;
However high the head of any else, that head is over all.

I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every
city large and small;
And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon
land and sea--And I will report all heroism from an American point
of view;
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me--for I am determined
to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.

I will sing the song of companionship;
I will show what alone must finally compact these;
I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it
in me;
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening
to consume me;
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;
I will give them complete abandonment;
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love;
For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?


8.

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I advance from the people _en masse_ in their own spirit;
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I make the poem of evil also--I commemorate that part also;
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--And I say there is
in fact no evil,
Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to
me, as anything else.

I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion--I too
go to the wars;
It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner's
pealing shouts;
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.

Each is not for its own sake;
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's
sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;
None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the
future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their
religion;
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;
Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;
Nor land, nor man or woman, without religion.