It is a rare thing in a man here to understand the states;
To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears today, is even yet, for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state,
Society waits unform’d, and is for a while between things ended and things begun.
I consider our American republic itself to be experimental. America, trying continually new experiments, counts for her justification and success (for who, as yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future.

Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,
The present holds thee not,
For such vast growth as thine, for such unparallel’d flight as thine, such brood as thine,
The future only holds thee and can hold thee.
Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform’d,
I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee,
How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?
That hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
Whose long unraveling stretches mysteriously through time.

Now America is a divine true sketch,
The United States have emerged from nebulous vagueness and suspense,
And are henceforth to enter upon their real history;
All the hitherto experience of the states has been but preparation, adolescence,
The preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied.
The history of the United States, grandly developing, exfoliating, stretching through the future, is yet to be enacted,
Only to be written at the remove of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years hence.
(Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.)

Others take finish, but America is not finished, perhaps never will be,
The republic is ever constructive and ever keeps vista—
America, too, is a prophecy.

Do you think liberty and equality have now done with America?
That the work is finished, and the dwelling is henceforth secure?
No! History is long, long, long,
America fully and fairly construed is the legitimate result and evolutionary outcome of the past,
Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our vistas!
How much is still to be disentangled, freed!
We were born in the political sense free—that creates an altogether different atmosphere. We seem in many ways to have grown careless of our freedom. Some day we will have to stir our croppers and fight to be free again!

A typical American character hardly exists. Like nature it is not a thing that is done or made, but a becoming, is a process, something going on. And though we have made good progress in a hundred years or so, we are only beginners. In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind.

We’ve got a hell of a lot to learn yet before we’re a real democracy. We’ve gone beyond all the others, very far beyond some, but we’re far from having yet achieved our dream. We’ll do it, after a hell of a lot of bellyaching, retching—often making mistakes, committing crimes. These are first steps, attempts, approaches, for must we not first creep, as a babe, even toward the grandest? We’ll get there in the end; God knows we’re not there yet.

America is long suffering, not quarrelsome, not easily aroused. But once stirred to the deep—once touched at the heart—she is fearful—she sways the fates themselves—yes, till judgment is hers. If it was necessary—I hope to God it will never be necessary—America would excel all other races, states, in military glory also, sorry as that is, sorry—O sorry—as it is.

But the army and the navy exists in America apart from the throbbing life of America. The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the army and navy, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, foreign to the instincts and tastes of the people—and, of course, soon in due time to give place to something native, something warmed with throbs of our own life. What it will be I know not.
But I say that all the military and naval personnel of the states must conform to the sternest principles of democracy. No punishment shall be provided for the sailors or soldiers without its being strictly eligible to be inflicted on the officers, even to the commander in chief.

Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our current politics and business, I still do not share the depression and despair on the subject which I find possessing many good people. I do not so much alarm myself—though very painful and full of dismay—at the corruption in all public life. It is but an outlet and expression on the surface of something far deeper—namely in the blood.

While the surfaces of current society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory, with tremendous streaks of crudeness, and with deficiencies and faults arousing deepest anxiety, there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true gold ore, in the mines of America’s general humanity—all the elements, promise, and certainty of a democratic nationality on the largest scales, and humanities en-masse, such as have yet existed only in dreams.

Some colossal foundry—such is a symbol of America—the flaming of the fire, the melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging crowds of workmen, the murky shadows, the rolling haze, the discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, the disorder, the dross and clouds of dust, the waste and extravagance of material—the mighty castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps delay’d long, yet each in its due time, with definite place and use and meaning.

It is with America as it is with nature,
I believe our institutions can digest, absorb, all elements, good or bad, godlike or devilish, that come along.
This common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d feeding its young—
If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn’d,
If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be,
Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country.
America is not so great in what she has done as in what she is doing,
Great because of her intestinal ebullitions—her cleansingness, so to speak.

American democracy’s stomach is fully strong enough not only to digest the morbific matter always presented, not to be turn’d aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating thither—but even to change such contributions into nutriment for highest use and life. It seems impossible for nature to fail to make good in the processes peculiar to her; in the same way it is impossible for America to fail to turn the worst luck into best—curses into blessings.

Thoughts—of seeds dropping into the ground, of births:
Nature sows countless seeds, makes incessantly crude attempts,
Thankful to get now and then something approximately good.
The morbid facts of politics and society everywhere are but passing incidents and flanges of our unbounded impetus of growth,
Weeds, annuals, of the rank, rich soil—not central, enduring, perennial things,
Far, far greater through what they prelude and necessitate, and are to be in future.
That there should be a good deal of waste land and many sterile spots, is an inherent necessity of the case—perhaps that the greater part should be waste.

Science tells us about excretions—the throwings off of the body—that the chief results are secured in the form of invisible exhalations—the whole flesh casting it forth. That strange, inarticulate force is not less operative in the institutions of society than in the physical realm. Society throws off some of its ephemera, its corruption, through politics—the process is offensive, we shudder over it—but it is still true that the interior system, throwing off its excreta this way, is wholly sound, prepared for the proper work of its own purification.
Foams and ferments the wine? It serves to purify.

Of these years I sing,
How they pass through convulsed pains,
Fearful and varied and long-continued storm and stress stages.
Our American politics are in an unusually effervescent condition,
With perhaps divers alarming and deadly portending shows and signals,
Shiftings, masses, and the whirl and deafening din,
We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, cross and under-currents, vortices—all so dark, untried—
And whither shall we turn?
Are these two or three drops any sample of the storm that is cooking for us?
Is all then lost? Perhaps I shall see the crash.

We are now going through the parturition,
We, this age, pass through the terrible transitions to the new age,
These of mine and of the states will in their turn be convuls’d, and serve other parturitions and transitions.
Few see the result—few have any faith in it,
Many desperately cling to the old age,
Yet continues the divine whirl, the conflict,
Stormily, capriciously, with such vast proportions of parts!

Let others tremble and turn pale,
I welcome this menace—welcome the storm—welcome the trial,
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.
Fall around, black clouds of death, I welcome thee with joy,
Now I shall see what the old ship is made of,
Now I shall know whether there is anything in you, Libertad,
I shall see how much you can stand,
(Anybody can sail with a fair wind, or a smooth sea.)

I look on all such things exactly as I look on a cloudy and evil state of weather. It is a natural results of things, a growth of something deeper, has its uses, and will hasten to exhaust itself and yield to something better. We old stagers take things very coolly, and count on coming out all right in due time. America cannot afford to despair.

Always America will be agitated and turbulent,
This day taking shape, not to be less so, but to be more so,
She submits to one steady flow of discrepancy,
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d—by these solidifying.

Strange, that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense—perhaps only really, lastingly condense—a nationality. Out of it we are born to real life and identity—perhaps the only terms on which that identity could really become fused, homogeneous and lasting.

It is not events of danger and threatening storms that I dread; agitation, experiment, etc. must be a gain, one way or another, here in the U. S. No matter what stage of excellence and grandeur a nation has arrived to, it shall be but the start to further excellence and grandeur. If it once settle down, placidly, content with what is, or with the past, it begins then to decay. So give us turbulence, give us excitement, give us the rage and disputes of hell, anything rather than this lethargy of death that spreads like a vapor of decaying corpses on our land.

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not.
Thus national rage, fury, discussion—
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl of aggregate and segregate—
Better than content;
Thus, also, the warning signals, invaluable for after times.

Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face—
The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over,
In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter,
The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within,
Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic.

I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for, I know not fruition’s success,
But I know that through war and crime your work goes on, and must yet go on;
For you too, as for all lands, the struggle, the long postponement, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
Prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, births, new projections and invigorations of ideas and men.

Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?
From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,
Thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all,
They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee—
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power.

NEXT: AMERICA: EVIDENCE OF PROGRESS

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