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The skunk-cabbage, golden and hopeful, in the dim forest

swamp, Refuses not its life because its odor is not applauded ; It does not betray its part in eternity Because you do not approve.

POET: Why should I, with fear-shaken hands, Supplicate the clouds. Or grovel, face-downward, in the grass. Who am myself the clouds, and more ; The grass, and more ; God, and more?

I am offspring of Nature, the supremest God, And I, myself, am for myself her supremest part. Wresting from her supremacy my own god-head ; And interpreting to her the God which is to be. What to me is it that Nature, too. Must pass down the endless channel? For me, my own life is eternity. Though it be a short race between two pillars. Nevertheless, it is for me eternity. For me, it is the beginning and the end of Time. I must declare myself utterly, without mercy. Or I am nothing. I have lost my opportunity. My life a bubble of the sea, which is, and is gone.

Yet I am not greater than others.

Let each express himself relentlessly ;

As the distorted oak and slender birch separately express

themselves. Man continually evolving, changing, thirsting. Eager, curious; making Earth pregnant; Restlessly studying his soul, that there may be gods. Man to himself sufficient, exclusive, absorbing, complete ; All-important; a maker of gods. And I a worker in the toy-shop,

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