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.