the Middle Ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and
finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all
the magnitude or geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the breed
of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple.

The American poets are to enclose old and new; for America is the race of
races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other
continents arrive as contributions: he gives them reception for their sake
and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country's spirit: he
incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. Mississippi
with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio
and Saint Lawrence with the Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not
embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him.
The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland, and the sea
off Massachusetts and Maine, and over Manhattan Bay, and over Champlain and
Erie, and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the
Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off
California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters
below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the
long Atlantic coast stretches longer, and the Pacific coast stretches
longer, he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them
also from east to west, and reflects what is between them. On him rise
solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and
live-oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and lime-tree and
cottonwood and tulip-tree and cactus and wild-vine and tamarind and
persimmon, and tangles as tangled as any cane-brake or swamp, and forests
coated with transparent ice and icicles, hanging from the boughs and
crackling in the wind, and sides and peaks of mountains, and pasturage
sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie,--with flights and songs
and screams that answer those of the wild-pigeon and high-hold and orchard-