OUT OF DOOES WITH NATUEE. 
325 
the cities to his morning meal, and takes a nation for " mine 
inn " bj the way, from zone to zone ! Say then, the Ameri- 
can is not also the truest poet ! 
Is the bird upon its tireless pinions " putting a belt around 
the world," a beautiful and glorious creature — the most 
poetical of images ? Why not then the man, who, in his 
car of power, sits calmly to be borne as by his own will, to 
the uttermost parts of the earth — a far more sublime embodi- 
ment of all that 
" Bottomless conceit " 
has shaped to poetry. 
Does the swallow breast the opposing winds, and cleave in 
undeviating flight the track of storms ? — the Yankee, in his 
steamship, follows on his subject waves ! 
Does the swallow glide across trackless wastes — above the 
sea-like crests of mighty forests — rise like a loosened arrow 
amidst the snows of mountains, and dive the abyss of val- 
veys? — the Yankee on his railroad thunders after it in 
clouds and fire — hurtling over plains, cleaving startled 
woods, to plunge reverberating through the yawning tunnel, 
and burst forth winding on the paths of cities ! 
Does the swallow lead the south wind's flight, and find its 
summer in a day ? — the Yankee can pass it on the way, can 
speak across a continent, bid a home arise before he starts, 
and offer the swallow lodgings in his chimney-flue, at that, 
when it arrives. 
There is no mistake about it — this same Yankee is the 
highest poet of the most poetical age the world ever saw, 
though it is perfectly well known that he has scarcely a vol- 
ume of respectable poetry — so called — to bless himself with- 
all! 
His poetry is a live substantiality — a creation — an entity 
of being and of action — of being, real as the firm-based 
earth — of action grander than Homeric dreams. The " metre 
ballad-monger " is no longer the poet of mankind — the 
