[Great Are the Myths]

GREAT are the myths .... I too delight in them,

Great are Adam and Eve .... I too look back and accept them;

Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,

inventors, rulers, warriors and priests.

 

Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,

Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft .... where you sail

I sail,

Yours is the muscle of life or death .... yours is the perfect

science .... in you I have absolute faith.

 

Great is today, and beautiful,

It is good to live in this age .... there never was any better.

 

Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of

democracy,

Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,

Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.

 

Great are yourself and myself,

We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest

or any,

What the best and worst did we could do,

What they felt .. do not we feel it in ourselves?

What they wished .. do we not wish the same?

 

Great is youth, and equally great is old age .... great are the day

and night;

Great is wealth and great is poverty .... great is expression and

great is silence.

 

Youth large lusty and loving .... youth full of grace and force and

fascination,

Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace

and force and fascination?

 

Day fullblown and splendid .... day of the immense sun, and

action and ambition and laughter,

The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep and

restoring darkness.

 

Wealth with the flush hand and fine clothes and

hospitality:

But then the soul’s wealth—which is candor and knowledge and

pride and enfolding love:

Who goes for men and women showing poverty richer than

wealth?

 

Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that

silence is also expressive,

That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the

coldest may be without words,

That the true adoration is likewise without words and without

kneeling.

Great is the greatest nation .. the nation of clusters of equal

nations.

 

Great is the earth, and the way it became what it is,

Do you imagine it is stopped at this? .... and the increase

abandoned?

Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is

from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases.

 

Great is the quality of truth in man,

The quality of truth in man supports itself through all

changes,

It is inevitably in the man .... He and it are in love, and never

leave each other.

 

The truth in man is no dictum .... it is vital as eyesight,

If there be any soul there is truth .... if there be man or woman

there is truth .... If there be physical or moral there is

truth,

If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth .... if there be

things at all upon the earth there is truth.

 

O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press

the whole way toward you,

Sound your voice! I scale mountains. or dive in the sea

after you.

 

Great is language .... it is the mightiest of the sciences,

It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth ....

and of men and women .... and of all qualities and

processes;

It is greater than wealth .... it is greater than buildings or ships or

religions or paintings or music.

 

Great is the English speech .... What speech is so great as the

English?

Great is the English brood .... What brood has so vast a destiny

as the English?

It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the

new rule,

The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and

justice and equality that are in the soul rule.

 

Great is the law .... Great are the old few landmarks of the law ....

they are the same in all times and shall not be disturbed.

Great are marriage, commerce, newspapers, books, freetrade,

railroads, steamers, international mails and telegraphs and

exchanges.

 

Great is Justice;

Justice is not settled by legislators and laws .... it is in the soul,

It cannot be varied by statutes any more than love or pride or the

attraction of gravity can,

It is immutable .. it does not depend on majorities .... majorities

or what not come at last before the same passionless and

exact tribunal.

 

For justice are the grand natural lawyers and perfect judges .... it

is in their souls,

It is well assorted .... they have not studied for nothing .... the

great includes the less,

They rule on the highest grounds .... they oversee all eras and

states and administrations,

 

The perfect judge fears nothing .... he could go front to front

before God,

Before the perfect judge all shall stand back .... life and death

shall stand back .... heaven and hell shall stand back.

 

Great is goodness;

I do not know what it is any more than I know what health is ....

but I know it is great.

 

Great is wickedness .... I find I often admire it just as much as I

admire goodness:

Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.

The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal

overthrow of things is great,

And there is another paradox.

 

Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,

Great is death .... Sure as life holds all parts together, death

holds all parts together;

Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death

is great as life.