The crash and cut-away of connecting wood-work, or through floors, if the fire smoulders under them, The crowd with their lit faces, watching-the glare and dense shadows;

-The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him,

The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,

The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge with his thumb,

The one who clean-shapes the handle, and sets it firmly in the socket;

The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,

The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engi

neers,

The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,

The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted

head,

The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither;

The siege of revolted lieges determined for liberty, The summons to surrender, the battering at castle-gates, the truce and parley;

The sack of an old city in its time,

The bursting-in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,

Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,

Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands,

Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,

The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,

The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust, The power of personality, just or unjust.

Muscle and pluck for ever!

4.

What invigorates life invigorates death,

And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man, And nothing endures but personal qualities.

What do you think endures?

Do you think the great city endures ?

Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best-built steamships?

Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chefs-d'œuvre of engineering, forts, armaments?

Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves; They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them;

The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or

woman;

If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

5.

The place where the great city stands is not the place of stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce,

Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing,

Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, Nor the place of the best libraries and schools—nor the place where money is plentiest,

Nor the place of the most numerous population.

Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards;

Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return, and understands them;

Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds;

Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place; Where the men and women think lightly of the laws; Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases; Where the populace rise at once against the neverending audacity of elected persons;

Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves;

Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority;

Where the citizen is always the head and ideal—and President, Mayor, Governor, and what not, are agents for pay;

Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves;

Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs;

Where speculations on the Soul are encouraged; Where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men,

Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;

Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands;
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands;
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands;
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,—
There the great city stands.

6.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look!

All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears;

A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the universe;

When he or she appears, materials are overawed,
The dispute on the Soul stops,

The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid away.

What is your money-making now? what can it do now? What is your respectability now?

What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?

Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the Soul now.

7.

A sterile landscape covers the ore-there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There is the mine, there are the miners;

The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers,

What always served, and always serves, is at hand.

Than this, nothing has better served-it has served all: Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek:

Served in building the buildings that last longer than

any;

Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;

Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi-served those whose relics remain in Central America; Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the druids ;

Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills of Scandinavia ;

Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars,

ships, ocean-waves;

Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths-served the pastoral tribes and nomads;

Served the long long distant Kelt-served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;

Served, before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia ;

Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war;

Served all great works on land, and all great works on

the sea;

For the mediæval ages, and before the medieval ages; Served not the living only, then as now, but served the

dead.

8.

I see the European headsman;

He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs, and strong naked arms,

And leans on a ponderous axe.

(Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?

Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?)

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;

I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected kings,

Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the

rest.

I see those who in any land have died for the good

cause;

The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run

out;

(Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)

I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe;
Both blade and helve are clean;

They spirt no more the blood of European nobles-they clasp no more the necks of queens.

I see the headsman withdraw and become useless; I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy—I see no longer any axe upon it;

I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race-the newest, largest race.