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192 With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys,

With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle,

With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk,

With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent,

With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,

With the fading religions and priests,

With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores,

With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years,

You and me arrived—America arrived and making this year,

This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

O but it is not the years—it is I, it is You,

We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,

We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more,

We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good,

All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,

The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,

Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.

As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)

I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,

I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.

(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?

Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)

I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,

I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god,

I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception,

I assert that all past days were what they must have been,

And that they could no-how have been better than they were,

And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,

And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.