No reminiscences may suffice either.

A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest ...

namely from its own soul.

This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets .-- As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of 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 of 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.