Greek poet, the genius of his country, the shade of immortal Romulus, stood over him, ‘post mediam noctem visus quum somnia vera,’ and forbade the perversion. … Is everything so sterile and pigmy here in New England, that we must all, writers and readers, be forever replenishing ourselves with the mighty wonders of the Old World? Is not the history of this people transcendent in the chronicles of the world for pure, homogeneous sublimity and beauty and richness? Go down some ages of ages from this day, compress the years from the landing of the Pilgrims to the death of Washington into the same span as the first two centuries of Athens now fill our memories. Will men then come hither from all regions of the globe — will the tomb of Washington, the rock of the Puritans then become classic to the world? will these spots and relics here give the inspiration, the theme, the image of the poet and orator and sculptor, and be the ground of splendid mythologies ? … We do not express the men and the miracles of our history in our social action, and correspondingly, ay, and by consequence, we do not outwrite them in poetry or art. We are looking abroad and back after a literature. Let us come and live, and know in living a high philosophy and faith, so shall we find now, here, the elements, and in our own good souls the fire. Of every storied bay and cliff and plain, we will make something infinitely nobler than Salamis or Marathon. This pale Massachusetts sky, this sandy soil and raw wind, all shall nurture us:
‘O Nature, less is all of thine,
Than are thy borrowings from our human breast.’
Rich skies, fair fields shall come to us, suffused with the immortal hues of spirit, of beauteous act and
