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190 Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)

Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,

I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually.

I give nothing as duties,

What others give as duties I give as living impulses,

(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions,

Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?

What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do,

I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself,

I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,

I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

After me, vista!

I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,

I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower,

Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,

I perceive I have no time to lose. 



Year of meteors! brooding year!

I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia,

(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd,

I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted the scaffold;) 