Complete Prose Works
on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven,
or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than
you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style,
and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or
diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I
will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or
effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like
curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or
startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat
or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or
portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved
by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and
out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the
traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians,
inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing
from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics,
mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native
grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever
who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest
expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes
one.
The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on
equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than
you, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did
you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more
than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good or
grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What
do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and the throes of human
desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the
soul which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and
everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the
sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all
pain.
The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, and
for encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or
secrecy, glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night and
day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall be
riches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent man
is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees
by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard
shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of
interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor the body
most--and not be for the Eastern States more than the Western, or the
Northern States more than the Southern.
Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the
greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and
remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, and braced
him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The
sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist,
phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer,
are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their
construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter
what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conception of it--of
them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be
love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness
of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be
love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty
of poems are henceforth the tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation
of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells
the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. The depths
are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are
resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of
the supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it,
departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, and whatever
may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They are sufficient for
any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any special
miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme
where every motion and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits
of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect
miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It
is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there
is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as they
are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis
philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what
is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of
all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and
of astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief,
the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through this life and doubtless
afterward--or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of
density, or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever
would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against
some being or influence, is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble
characterize the great master--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt.
The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health
for himself in being one of the mass--he sees the hiatus in singular
eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the
general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master
knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably
great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children,
and bring them up well--that to _be_ is just as great as to perceive or
tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more
than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out
of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they
must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or
degrade it.
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real
body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts
are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile
light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many
fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process
exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the
carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd
beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam
with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions and actions with
theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and
coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of
use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
You large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than
any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title
to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of
the library, (indeed he or she alone is owner,) who can read the same
through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in
whom they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and rich and
large.
These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shall
receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not
permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns of
woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or
to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns of ships,
or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which
distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or
contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially,
it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work
nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornaments can be allow'd that
conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the
nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary
to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without
ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and
vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'd only in those communities
where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and
the people of these States must never be demean'd to romances. As soon
as histories are properly told, no more need of romances.
The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by
the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be forgiven
of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we
have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there
is no single exception, and that never since our earth gather'd itself
in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its
smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the
enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole republic of states,
a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and despised--and that the
soul has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd--and thrift
without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff--and there
never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet
or satellite, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes,
nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of
abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of formation or
reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and
comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness
and destuctiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of
nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs,
are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of
the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb, and from her
birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been
thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to