And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any. I will not make poems with reference to parts. But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble, And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days. Whitman’s philosophy knew no evil and no wrong. The fact of existence proved the right of existence; in the great workshop of nature every tool had its special use and its rightful place. The imperfections of the world come from the narrow visions of men. If the perspective is right, the universe is right. From the narrow valley the house may look old and worn, the fences decayed, the fields barren, the woods scraggy and the cliff ragged and bare; but climb to the only place where either life or landscape can be rightly seen, the mountain top, and look once more. The hills, the valley, the stream, the woods, and the farms have melted and blended into one harmonious whole, and every imperfection has been swept away. The universe is filled with myriad worlds as important as our own, each one a tiny floating speck in an endless sea of space—each whirling, turning, moving on and on and on, through the countless ages, past and yet to come. No one can tell the purpose of their tireless, endless flight through space; but still we know that each has an orbit of its own, and every world is related to the rest, and every grain of sand and the weakest, feeblest spark of power has its needful place in the balance of the whole. So all of good, and all of bad, and all of life, and all of death, and all of all, has the right to be and must needs be. Walt Whitman did not even know how to divide the evil from the good, but he sang them both alike. I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent. The universe can make no mistakes, every particle of energy that has permeated the world since time began, has been working toward a completer system and a more harmonious whole. There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil. From the trials and sorrows and disappointments of life, even from its bitterness and doubt and sin, are often born the holiest desires, the sincerest endeavors and the most righteous deeds. Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love, But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)