The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. The coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanour of the vital and great. The swarms of the polished, deprecating, and reflectors, and the polite, float off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite--they are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it--no disguise can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true, the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. [Script: Meantime, dear friend, Farewell, Walt Whitman.] _CHANTS DEMOCRATIC._ _STARTING FROM PAUMANOK._ 1. Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born, Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother; After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements; Dweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my city,--or on southern savannas; Or a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in California; Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring; Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy; Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri--aware of mighty Niagara Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains--the hirsute and strong- breasted bull; Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow, my amaze; Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's, And heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the swamp-cedars, Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World. 2. Victory, union, faith, identity, time, Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. This, then, is life; Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions. How curious! how real! Under foot the divine soil--over head the sun. See, revolving, the globe; The ancestor-continents, away, grouped together; The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus between.