Santa SPIRITA,[1] breather, life, Beyond the light, lighter than light, Beyond the flames of hell--joyous, leaping easily above hell; Beyond Paradise--perfumed solely with mine own perfume; Including all life on earth--touching, including God--including Saviour and Satan; Ethereal, pervading all--for, without me, what were all? what were God? Essence of forms--life of the real identities, permanent, positive, namely the unseen, Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man--I, the General Soul, Here the Square finishing, the solid, I the most solid, Breathe my breath also through these little songs. [Footnote 1: The reader will share my wish that Whitman had written _sanctus spiritus_, which is right, instead of _santa spirita_, which is methodically wrong.] _SONGS OF PARTING._ _SINGERS AND POETS._ 1. The indications and tally of time; Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words; The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark--but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark; The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race, He is the glory and extract, thus far, of things and of the human race. 2. The singers do not beget--only the POET begets; The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough--but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems; Not every century, or every five centuries, has contained such a day, for all its names. The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers; The name of each is eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-singer, echo-singer, parlour-singer, love-singer, or something else. 3. All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers; The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science. Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness--such are some of the words of poems. 4. The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist--all these underlie the maker of poems. 5.