It would seem to be the first idea of the infinite, in being infinite, not to be anywhere else. It could not be anywhere else if it tried; and if a locomotive is a real thing, a thing wrought in and out of the fiber of the earth and of the lives of men, the infinity and poetry in it are a matter of course. I like to think that it is merely a matter of seeing a locomotive as it is, of seeing it in enough of its actual relations as it is, to feel that it is beautiful; that the beauty, the order, the energy, and the restfulness of the whole universe are pulsing there through its wheels. The times when we do not feel poetry in a locomotive are the times when we are not matter-of-fact enough. We do not see it in enough of its actual relations. Being matter-of-fact enough is all that makes anything poetic. Everything in the universe, seen as it is, is seen as the symbol, the infinitely connected, infinitely crowded symbol of everything else in the universe--the summing up of everything else--another whisper of God's. Have I not seen the great Sun Itself, from out of its huge heaven, packed in a seed and blown about on a wind? I have seen the leaves of the trees drink all night from the stars, and when I have listened with my soul--thousands of years--I have heard The Night and The Day creeping softly through mountains. People called it geology. It seems that if a man cannot be infinite by going to the infinite, he is going to be infinite where he is. He is carving it on the hills, tunneling it through the rocks of the earth, piling it up on the crust of it, with winds and waters and flame and steel he is writing it on all things--that he is infinite, that he will be infinite. The whole planet is his signature. If what the modern man is trying to say in his modern age is his own infinity, it naturally follows that the only way a modern artist can be a great artist in a modern age is to say in that age that man is infinite, better than any one else is saying it. The best way to express this infinity of man is to seek out the things in the life of the man which are the symbols of his infinity--which suggest his infinity the most--and then play on those symbols and let those symbols play on him. In other words the poet's program is something like this. The modern age means the infinity of man. Modern art means symbolism of man's infinity. The best symbol of the man's infinity the poet can find, in this world the man has made, is The Machine.