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Rh I lead the present with friendly hand toward the
 * future.

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.

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

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.

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.

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,