the time had come to reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the lights thrown on them by the advent of America and democracy⁠—to chant those themes through the utterance of one, not only the grateful and reverent legatee of the past, but the born child of the New World⁠—to illustrate all through the genesis and ensemble of today; and that such illustration and ensemble are the chief demands of America’s prospective imaginative literature. Not to carry out, in the approved style, some choice plot of fortune or misfortune, or fancy, or fine thoughts, or incidents, or courtesies⁠—all of which has been done overwhelmingly and well, probably never to be excell’d⁠—but that while in such aesthetic presentation of objects, passions, plots, thoughts, etc. , our lands and days do not want, and probably will never have, anything better than they already possess from the bequests of the past, it still remains to be said that there is even towards all those a subjective and contemporary point of view appropriate to ourselves alone, and to our new genius and environments, differing from anything hitherto; and that such conception of current or gone-by life and art is for us the only means of their assimilation consistent with the Western world.

Indeed, and anyhow, to put it specifically, has not the time arrived when, (if it must be plainly said, for democratic America’s sake, if for no other) there must imperatively come a readjustment of the whole theory and nature of Poetry? The question is important, and I may turn the argument over and repeat it: Does not the best thought of our day and Republic conceive of a birth and spirit of song superior to anything past or present? To the effectual and moral consolidation of our lands (already, as materially establish’d, the greatest factors in known history, and far, far greater through what they prelude and necessitate, and are to be in future)⁠—to conform with and build on the concrete realities and theories of the universe furnish’d by science, and henceforth the only irrefragable basis for anything, verse included⁠—to root both influences in the emotional and imaginative action of the modern time, and dominate all that precedes or opposes them⁠—is not either a radical advance and step forward, or a new verteber of the best song indispensable?