34 HEREDITY. 



When we have poetry which can fly with all the 

 constellations of the sky of culture, and utter to 

 the music which the morning stars sang together the 

 deepest truths of physical and ethical science, we 

 shall no longer have national poems merely. God 

 will give them a great future } 7 et, no doubt. But the 

 supreme poetry of time to come is not to be national, 

 but international. We are to have harps struck, I 

 hope, that will rise into the region of universal laws 

 in things ethical and physical, and proclaim what all 

 men will be glad to transmute into life, not only on 

 the Andes and the Rocky Mountains, but at the feet 

 of the Himalayas, and under the shadows of the hills 

 of China. 



It is the will of God, apparently, that men should 

 all have fair chances. The poet of fair chances is 

 the poet of the future. Wherever a human heart 

 beats, there the chords of American literature are 

 likely to be listened to, provided they are struck 

 according to the new key-note of our own demo- 

 cratic heart. There is much more ground for hope 

 that American poetry may obtain a cosmopolitan 

 hearing than that any other poetry on the globe 

 will do so. The drift of history for one hundred 

 years has been toward freedom politically. More 

 and more, as time unrolls, it is to be hoped that the 

 Throne and the Court in all their fashions are to 

 be reverenced in the spirit of theocratic equality 

 among men. The poets of loyalty to all the fash- 

 ions of the Court are those who will be crowned by 

 the Court. 



