<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0189" id="link2H_4_0189"></SPAN></p>
<h2> BOOK XXIII </h2>
<p>By Blue Ontario's Shore</p>
<p>By blue Ontario's shore,<br/>
As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the<br/>
dead that return no more,<br/>
A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,<br/>
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,<br/>
chant me the carol of victory,<br/>
And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,<br/>
And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.<br/>
<br/>
(Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,<br/>
And death and infidelity at every step.)<br/>
<br/>
2<br/>
A Nation announcing itself,<br/>
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,<br/>
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.<br/>
<br/>
A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,<br/>
What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,<br/>
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,<br/>
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,<br/>
We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of<br/>
ourselves,<br/>
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,<br/>
We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the world,<br/>
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.<br/>
<br/>
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,<br/>
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or<br/>
sinful in ourselves only.<br/>
<br/>
(O Mother—O Sisters dear!<br/>
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us,<br/>
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)<br/>
<br/>
3<br/>
Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?<br/>
There can be any number of supremes—one does not countervail<br/>
another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or<br/>
one life countervails another.<br/>
<br/>
All is eligible to all,<br/>
All is for individuals, all is for you,<br/>
No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.<br/>
<br/>
All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.<br/>
<br/>
Produce great Persons, the rest follows.<br/>
<br/>
4<br/>
Piety and conformity to them that like,<br/>
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,<br/>
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,<br/>
Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!<br/>
<br/>
I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every<br/>
one I meet,<br/>
Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?<br/>
Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?<br/>
<br/>
(With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,<br/>
These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)<br/>
<br/>
O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?<br/>
If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.<br/>
<br/>
Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,<br/>
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey—juice,<br/>
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,<br/>
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.<br/>
<br/>
5<br/>
Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,<br/>
America brings builders, and brings its own styles.<br/>
<br/>
The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and<br/>
pass'd to other spheres,<br/>
A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.<br/>
<br/>
America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all<br/>
hazards,<br/>
Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use<br/>
of precedents,<br/>
Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under<br/>
their forms,<br/>
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne<br/>
from the house,<br/>
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was<br/>
fittest for its days,<br/>
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who<br/>
approaches,<br/>
And that he shall be fittest for his days.<br/>
<br/>
Any period one nation must lead,<br/>
One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.<br/>
<br/>
These States are the amplest poem,<br/>
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,<br/>
Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the<br/>
day and night,<br/>
Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,<br/>
Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,<br/>
Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the<br/>
soul loves.<br/>
<br/>
6<br/>
Land of lands and bards to corroborate!<br/>
Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face,<br/>
To him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's,<br/>
His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,<br/>
Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,<br/>
Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,<br/>
Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with<br/>
incomparable love,<br/>
Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,<br/>
Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,<br/>
Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,<br/>
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia,<br/>
Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,<br/>
If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he<br/>
stretching with them North or South,<br/>
Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them,<br/>
Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock,<br/>
live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia,<br/>
Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp,<br/>
He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with<br/>
northern transparent ice,<br/>
Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,<br/>
Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the<br/>
fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,<br/>
His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil,<br/>
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,<br/>
Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,<br/>
Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,<br/>
The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of<br/>
the Constitution,<br/>
The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,<br/>
The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,<br/>
The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals,<br/>
hunters, trappers,<br/>
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the<br/>
gestation of new States,<br/>
Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming<br/>
up from the uttermost parts,<br/>
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially<br/>
the young men,<br/>
Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they<br/>
have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the<br/>
presence of superiors,<br/>
The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and<br/>
decision of their phrenology,<br/>
The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd,<br/>
The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity,<br/>
good temper and open-handedness, the whole composite make,<br/>
The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,<br/>
The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement<br/>
of the population,<br/>
The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,<br/>
Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points,<br/>
Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the Northeast,<br/>
Northwest, Southwest,<br/>
Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,<br/>
Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the<br/>
ruins of all the rest,<br/>
On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours<br/>
be the stake, and respite no more.<br/>
<br/>
7<br/>
(Lo, high toward heaven, this day,<br/>
Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd,<br/>
I mark the new aureola around your head,<br/>
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,<br/>
With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing,<br/>
And your port immovable where you stand,<br/>
With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist,<br/>
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly<br/>
crush'd beneath you,<br/>
The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his<br/>
senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,<br/>
The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much,<br/>
To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth,<br/>
An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)<br/>
<br/>
8<br/>
Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and ever<br/>
keeps vista,<br/>
Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn you,<br/>
O days of the future I believe in you—I isolate myself for your sake,<br/>
O America because you build for mankind I build for you,<br/>
O well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision<br/>
and science,<br/>
Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.<br/>
(Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!<br/>
But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,<br/>
pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)<br/>
<br/>
9<br/>
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,<br/>
I heard the voice arising demanding bards,<br/>
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be<br/>
fused into the compact organism of a Nation.<br/>
<br/>
To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,<br/>
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle,<br/>
as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.<br/>
<br/>
Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most<br/>
need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest,<br/>
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their<br/>
poets shall.<br/>
<br/>
(Soul of love and tongue of fire!<br/>
Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!<br/>
Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren, barren?)<br/>
<br/>
10<br/>
Of these States the poet is the equable man,<br/>
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of<br/>
their full returns,<br/>
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,<br/>
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither<br/>
more nor less,<br/>
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,<br/>
He is the equalizer of his age and land,<br/>
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,<br/>
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,<br/>
thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,<br/>
commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,<br/>
immortality, government,<br/>
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as<br/>
good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,<br/>
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,<br/>
He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,)<br/>
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round<br/>
helpless thing,<br/>
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,<br/>
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,<br/>
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,<br/>
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,<br/>
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women<br/>
as dreams or dots.<br/>
<br/>
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,<br/>
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,<br/>
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.<br/>
<br/>
Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,<br/>
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,<br/>
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always<br/>
ready to fall for Liberty.)<br/>
<br/>
11<br/>
For the great Idea,<br/>
That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.<br/>
<br/>
Songs of stern defiance ever ready,<br/>
Songs of the rapid arming and the march,<br/>
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,<br/>
Warlike flag of the great Idea.<br/>
<br/>
(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!<br/>
I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,<br/>
I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight—O the<br/>
hard-contested fight!<br/>
The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles—the hurtled balls scream,<br/>
The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour incessant<br/>
from the line,<br/>
Hark, the ringing word Charge!—now the tussle and the furious<br/>
maddening yells,<br/>
Now the corpses tumble curl'd upon the ground,<br/>
Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,<br/>
Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)<br/>
<br/>
12<br/>
Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in<br/>
the States?<br/>
The place is august, the terms obdurate.<br/>
<br/>
Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind,<br/>
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself,<br/>
He shall surely be question'd beforehand by me with many and stern questions.<br/>
<br/>
Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?<br/>
Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?<br/>
Have you learn'd the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,<br/>
pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and objects?<br/>
Have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the<br/>
first year of Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners, ratified<br/>
by the States, and read by Washington at the head of the army?<br/>
Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution?<br/>
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them,<br/>
and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?<br/>
Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the<br/>
bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?<br/>
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?<br/>
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,<br/>
fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the<br/>
whole People?<br/>
Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?<br/>
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to<br/>
life itself?<br/>
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?<br/>
Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?<br/>
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the<br/>
last-born? little and big? and for the errant?<br/>
<br/>
What is this you bring my America?<br/>
Is it uniform with my country?<br/>
Is it not something that has been better told or done before?<br/>
Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?<br/>
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?—Is the good old cause in it?<br/>
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,<br/>
literats, of enemies' lands?<br/>
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?<br/>
Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?<br/>
Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union in<br/>
that secession war?<br/>
Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?<br/>
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my<br/>
strength, gait, face?<br/>
Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere<br/>
amanuenses?<br/>
Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?<br/>
What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago,<br/>
Kanada, Arkansas?<br/>
Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians<br/>
standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, Western<br/>
men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the<br/>
promptness of their love?<br/>
Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen,<br/>
each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist,<br/>
infidel, who has ever ask'd any thing of America?<br/>
What mocking and scornful negligence?<br/>
The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons,<br/>
By the roadside others disdainfully toss'd.<br/>
<br/>
13<br/>
Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from poems pass away,<br/>
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,<br/>
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature,<br/>
America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it<br/>
or conceal from it, it is impassive enough,<br/>
Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,<br/>
If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there<br/>
is no fear of mistake,<br/>
(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his country<br/>
absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it.)<br/>
<br/>
He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results<br/>
sweetest in the long run,<br/>
The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;<br/>
In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-opera,<br/>
shipcraft, any craft,<br/>
He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original<br/>
practical example.<br/>
<br/>
Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets,<br/>
People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers,<br/>
There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is done,<br/>
Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,<br/>
Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb,<br/>
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power;<br/>
How dare you place any thing before a man?<br/>
<br/>
14<br/>
Fall behind me States!<br/>
A man before all—myself, typical, before all.<br/>
<br/>
Give me the pay I have served for,<br/>
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,<br/>
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,<br/>
I have given aims to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid<br/>
and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,<br/>
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence<br/>
toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,<br/>
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,<br/>
and with the mothers of families,<br/>
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,<br/>
stars, rivers,<br/>
Dismiss'd whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,<br/>
Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for<br/>
others on the same terms,<br/>
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State,<br/>
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe his last,<br/>
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored,<br/>
To life recalling many a prostrate form;)<br/>
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,<br/>
Rejecting none, permitting all.<br/>
<br/>
(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?<br/>
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)<br/>
<br/>
15<br/>
I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,<br/>
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,<br/>
It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one,<br/>
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,<br/>
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.<br/>
<br/>
Underneath all, individuals,<br/>
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,<br/>
The American compact is altogether with individuals,<br/>
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,<br/>
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one<br/>
single individual—namely to You.<br/>
<br/>
(Mother! with subtle sense severe, with the naked sword in your hand,<br/>
I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.)<br/>
<br/>
16<br/>
Underneath all, Nativity,<br/>
I swear I will stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it;<br/>
I swear I am charm'd with nothing except nativity,<br/>
Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.<br/>
<br/>
Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women,<br/>
(I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of expressing<br/>
love for men and women,<br/>
After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men and<br/>
women.) in myself,<br/>
<br/>
I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself,<br/>
(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor<br/>
the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States.)<br/>
<br/>
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments,<br/>
ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,<br/>
Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (the same<br/>
monotonous old song.)<br/>
<br/>
17<br/>
O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,<br/>
Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,<br/>
Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,<br/>
Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships,<br/>
are you and me,<br/>
Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,<br/>
The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth<br/>
forget), was you and me,<br/>
Natural and artificial are you and me,<br/>
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,<br/>
Past, present, future, are you and me.<br/>
<br/>
I dare not shirk any part of myself,<br/>
Not any part of America good or bad,<br/>
Not to build for that which builds for mankind,<br/>
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,<br/>
Not to justify science nor the march of equality,<br/>
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time.<br/>
<br/>
I am for those that have never been master'd,<br/>
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,<br/>
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.<br/>
<br/>
I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,<br/>
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.<br/>
<br/>
I will not be outfaced by irrational things,<br/>
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,<br/>
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,<br/>
This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount, and it I<br/>
teach again.<br/>
<br/>
(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim'd at your breast,<br/>
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams<br/>
your dilating form,<br/>
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)<br/>
<br/>
18<br/>
I will confront these shows of the day and night,<br/>
I will know if I am to be less than they,<br/>
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,<br/>
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,<br/>
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,<br/>
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning,<br/>
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves,<br/>
and I am not to be enough for myself.<br/>
<br/>
I match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes,<br/>
Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself,<br/>
America isolated yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?<br/>
These States, what are they except myself?<br/>
<br/>
I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake,<br/>
I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.<br/></p>
<p>(Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,<br/>
I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,<br/>
I know not fruition's success, but I know that through war and crime<br/>
your work goes on, and must yet go on.)<br/>
<br/>
19<br/>
Thus by blue Ontario's shore,<br/>
While the winds fann'd me and the waves came trooping toward me,<br/>
I thrill'd with the power's pulsations, and the charm of my theme<br/>
was upon me,<br/>
Till the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me.<br/>
<br/>
And I saw the free souls of poets,<br/>
The loftiest bards of past ages strode before me,<br/>
Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me.<br/>
<br/>
20<br/>
O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!<br/>
Not for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch'd<br/>
you forth,<br/>
Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario's shores,<br/>
Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage song.<br/>
<br/>
Bards for my own land only I invoke,<br/>
(For the war the war is over, the field is clear'd,)<br/>
Till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward,<br/>
To cheer O Mother your boundless expectant soul.<br/>
<br/>
Bards of the great Idea! bards of the peaceful inventions! (for the<br/>
war, the war is over!)<br/>
Yet bards of latent armies, a million soldiers waiting ever-ready,<br/>
Bards with songs as from burning coals or the lightning's fork'd stripes!<br/>
Ample Ohio's, Kanada's bards—bards of California! inland bards—<br/>
bards of the war!<br/>
You by my charm I invoke.<br/></p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0190" id="link2H_4_0190"></SPAN></p>
<h2> Reversals </h2>
<p>Let that which stood in front go behind,<br/>
Let that which was behind advance to the front,<br/>
Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions,<br/>
Let the old propositions be postponed,<br/>
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself,<br/>
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself<br/></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />