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Are you faithful to things? Do you teach whatever
the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood,
amativeness, angers, excesses, crimes, teach?
Have you sped through customs, laws, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies,
whirls, fierce contentions? Are you very strong?
Are you of the whole people?
Are you not of some coterie? some school or religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating
to life itself?
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of
These States?
Have you sucked the nipples of the breasts of the
mother of many children?
Have you too the old, ever-fresh, forbearance and
impartiality?
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to
maturity? for the last-born? little and big?
and for the errant?

29. What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or done
before?
Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in
some ship?
Is it a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?
Has it never dangled at the heels of the poets, politicians,
literats, of enemies' lands?
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is
still here?
Does it answer universal needs? Will it improve
manners?