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Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here
in the States?
The place is august, the terms obdurate.

Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body
and mind,
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe him-
self,
He shall surely be question'd beforehand by me with many and
stern questions.

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Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?
Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?
Have you learn'd the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,
pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and
objects?
Have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the
first year of Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners,
ratified by the States, and read by Washington at the head
of the army?
Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind
them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea,
the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers,
teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the
whole People?
Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now
to life itself?
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
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?

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