I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant,
These heated, torn, distracted ages are to be compacted and made whole.

Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together,
Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World,
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.

Lands fearing nothing, (I will have no other lands,)
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west,
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,
Learn’d and unlearn’d are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,
Each nation courteously saluting all other nations,
The true new world of the democracies resplendent en-masse,
The conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them,
The envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them.

Democracy alone can bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however various and distant lands, into a family,
Democracy carried far beyond politics, extended to all departments of civilization and humanity, especially the moral and esthetic—the regions of taste, the standards of manners and beauty—and even to philosophy and theology,
With spreading mantle covering the world—
All the nations of this earth, diverse as they appear in mind or body, members of one family,
Our common humanity, the solidarity of races,
The same red, running blood, mine and yours, everywhere,
Interlinking the inhabitants of the earth together as groups of one family—
The people to become brothers and sisters,
The brotherhood and sisterhood of the entire earth,
The dream of all hope, all time.

I say democracy infers loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself—
Universal democratic comradeship uniting closer and closer all nations, and all humanity,
A vaster, saner, more splendid comradeship, typifying the people everywhere.

The fruition of democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future—mainly through the copious production of perfect characters among the people,
The rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the intuitions of men and women, and of self-esteem and personality.

It must be credited with its results when it has dominated mankind—has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized world—has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unprecedented heights—has sway’d the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying nature’s own—has fashion’d, systematized, and triumphantly finish’d and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel’d success, a new earth and a new man.

But the throes of birth are upon us, the mighty present age!
The rapidity of movement—the violent contrasts, fluctuations of light and shade, of hope and fear—great new underlying facts and new ideas rushing and spreading everywhere!
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic,
Lo, how he urges and urges,
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere.

Frontiers and boundaries are less and less able to divide men,
The modern inventions—the wholesale engines of war, the world-spreading instruments of peace—are interlinking the inhabitants of the earth together as groups of one family,
The cities confer with each other from across oceans,
The continents talk under the waves of seas.
The electric telegraphs of the earth, filaments of the news of wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions,
The cheap swift travel bringing far nations together,
The common newspaper, the cheap book, the internationality of post office and mails—
These and the world-spreading factories interlink all geography, all lands,
The grandest proof of modern civilization and practical brotherhood.

What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas?
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms,
No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights,
But all know that some such things are to happen as mark the greatest moral convulsions of the earth.

Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble,
On all sides tyrants tremble, crowns are unsteady, crowns grow dim,
The earth, restive, confronts a new era,
The human race, restive, on the watch for some better era.

Races are marching and countermarching by swift millions and tens of millions,
Everything indicates unparalleled reforms.
Never was justice so mighty amid injustice,
Never did the idea of equality erect itself so haughty and uncompromising amid inequality, as today,
Never were such sharp questions asked as today,
Never was there more eagerness to know.

Under the thin glaze-surface of conventionalities, a vast plummetless depth of democratic humanity is existing, thinking, acting, ebbing and flowing, that I would like, 0 so like, to flatter myself I am giving or trying to give voice to.
As if in some colossal drama, the nations of our time, and all the characteristics of civilization, seem hurrying, stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing up, toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement—not to conclude the infinite scenas of the race’s life and toil and happiness and sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear’d from oldest, worst incumbrances, accumulations, and man resume the eternal play anew, and under happier, freer auspices.

What fails so far, may yet be accomplished by song, radiating, clustering, concentrating from all the lands of the earth, into a new chorus and diapason,
One thought ever at the fore—that in the divine ship, the world, breasting time and space, all peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination:
Democracy total, result of centuries.

I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage,
I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races,
I see this day the people beginning their landmarks, (all others give way,)
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, to build a grander future.
A reborn race appears, the height to be superb humanity,
War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing left but joy!
Women and men in wisdom, innocence, and health—all joy!
A perfect world, all joy!

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