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Chants Democratic.
115

I lead the present with friendly hand toward the
future.

19. Bravas to States whose Semitic impulses send wholesome
children to the next age!
But damn that which spends itself on flaunters and
dalliers, with no thought of the stain, pains,
dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.

20. By great bards only can series of peoples and States
be fused into the compact organism of one
nation.

21. To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion,
is no account,
That only holds men together which is living principles,
as the hold of the limbs of the body, or
the fibres of plants.

22. Of all races and eras, These States, with veins full
of poetical stuff, most need poets, and are to have
the greatest, and use them the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee
so much as their poets shall.

23. Of mankind, the poet is the equable man,
Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque,
eccentric, fail of their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place
is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions,
neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,