"But, Celia, Celia, tell me what to be," I asked, "and what to do, To keep your faith in me, To witness mine in you!" She answered: "Dare to see In every man and woman everywhere The making of us two. See none that we can spare From the creation of our soul. Swear to be whole. Let not your faith abate, But establish it in persons and exalt it in the state." IV Celia has challenged me.... Be my reply, Challenge to poets who, with tinkling tricks, Meet life and pass it by. "Beauty," they ask, "in politics?" "If you put it there," say I. Wide the new world had opened its bright gates. And a woman who had heard of the new world All her life long and had saved her pence By hard frugality, to be her competence In the free home, came eagerly in nineteen seven Into These States, With her little earnings furled In a large handkerchief--but with a heart Too rich to be contained, for she had done her part: She had come With faith to Heaven. But there was a panic that year, No work, no wages in These States. And a great fear Seized on the immigrant. And so she took her pence All of them, furled Safe in her handkerchief, to a government cashier-- A clerk in the post-office. (And he relates Her errand as a joke, yet tenderly For I watched him telling me.) ... Not knowing English, being dumb, She had brought with her a thin-faced lad To interpret. And he made it clear, While she unfurled Her handkerchief and poured the heap of coins out of her hand, That 'she was giving all she had-- To be used no matter how, you understand' ... Lest harm should come to the new world. O doubters of democracy, Undo your mean contemptuous art!-- More than in all that poetry has said, More than in mound or marble, in the living live the dead. The past has done its reproductive part. Hear now the cry of beauty's present needs, Of comrades levelling a thousand creeds, Finding futility In conflict, selfishness, hardness of heart! For love has many poets who can see Ascending in the sky Above the shadowy passes The everlasting hills: humanity. O doubters of the time to be, What is this might, this mystery, Moving and singing through democracy, This music of the masses And of you and me-- But purging and dynamic poetry!-- What is this eagerness from sea to sea But young divinity!