No More Learning

If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table;
If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her--why I often
meet strangers in the street, and love them.

Why, what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you then that thought yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you?
Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief,
Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;
Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw
your name in print,
Do you give in that you are any less immortal?


3.

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable
and untouching;
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are
alive or no;
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and
outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see,
And all else behind or through them.

The wife--and she is not one jot less than the husband;
The daughter--and she is just as good as the son;
The mother--and she is every bit as much as the father.

Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,
Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
All these I see--but nigher and farther the same I see;
None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the
value itself.

There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;
It is not what is printed, preached, discussed--it eludes discussion and
print;
It is not to be put in a book--it is not in this book;
It is for you, whoever you are--it is no farther from you than your hearing
and sight are from you;
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest--it is ever provoked by them.
You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it;
You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there;
Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or
in the daily papers or the weekly papers,
Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of
stock.


4.

The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it--surely the drift of them is
something grand!
I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is
happiness,
And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,
or reconnoissance,
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and
without luck must be a failure for us,
And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that
with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and
outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that
fill each minute of time for ever,
What have you reckoned them for, camerado?
Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a
store?
Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a
lady's leisure?

Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be
painted in a picture?
Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious
combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the
savans?
Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture
itself?

Old institutions--these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the
practice handed along in manufactures--will we rate them so high?