Classic Poem

Let us be silent from now on, the loud voices say:
The good things have all been said — why say them again?
The voices gathered at the horizon at sunrise and advised the sun not to come up:
The good sunrises have all happened — why should the sun rise again?
The voices hurried to the ambitious acorn and asked the acorn: Why are you fool enough to want to be an oak?
They asked: Oaks have been oaks for a long time: all the real oaks have lived: why add to the humdrum of oaks?
But the oak did not trouble itself to ask the meaning of the oak, it just grew:
It did not apologize because oaktrees had existed before, it was just fulfilled:
The sun comes up beautiful every morning according to appointment — sometimes in cloud, sometimes fair, but always beautiful
The voices protest but the earth turns and the moon and the stars go on attending to their business
I too hear the voices and they always say the same thing:
The voices never go forward — they always go back
I do not say that the great things have not all been spoken —
I only say that I too will speak great truths:
I do not know but I may speak the greatest truths yet spoken.
I do not stop at the germ — I go on to the flower and the fruit:
I do not stop at the impulse to sing: I go on to the song: I sing:
Whether I say old things or new things does not seem to matter,
But whether I say true things does matter a good deal and all
Whether men lived before I lived does not matter,
But whether I live a big life matters a good deal and all
The voices call out for retreat but I go on.
I dont know but my honest dream is as original as any,
I dont know but my feet too tread virgin ground,
I dont know but I too am a pioneer going beyond all the settlements,
I dont know but I too say first words in a new tongue:
I dont know — I dont know: how could I know and why should I care to know?
I dont know but I too may help men in their despairs,
I dont know but I may divulge passwords as potential as any that have been bequeathed by the past,
I dont know but the world was begun again bran new the day I came over,
I dont know but my live call will go as far and be as welcome as a dead echo.
God knows I have nothing but honor for the live remains of dead prophets:
I get down off my high horse and worship them, I borrow strength from my proud inheritance:
But I dont see why I should quote them against myself,
But I dont see why I should make them so useful I am no use at all,
But I dont see why they should stand in my way and why I should not have the right to shove them aside
Yes, I hear the voices, and they declare that the world today is no good — only the parent world was good:
But I revolt — I talk up for my own time and the kind of people who go with it
I say to the voices: Listen to me — I will replace the best words of the saints by the better words of the sinners,
I will take the oldest images of love and establish them in newest relations with the heart
Do you say the many seers of many ages have helped men to live?
I say it before you and after you but I also say I help men to live.
I dont know why today's glory should borrow from yesterday's sunlight,
I don't know why today's hunger should be fed with yesterday's food,
I dont know why I should humble and surrender myself to the phantom procession of my fathers:
I keep the process coherent — I am as vital an atom as any,
I coming when I do am as original as any other coming when he may.
Though true lives have always been lived truer lives will always remain to be lived:
I will prove that though supreme things have been said they will remain to be said again,
And I will prove that whatever dead singers may have been to men I will be more than that over again,
And I will prove that I am genuine as any and that it wont pay the world to refuse to listen,
For the same force that of old made use of others is now making use of me,
And ideals imperfect in the best of them are perfect in me,
As ideals imperfect in me will be perfect hereafter in my successors.
I dont think all the good things have been said or could be said:
Why, I can hear unborn lovers even now underground, seed-sowers of spiritual prophecy, preparing the harvests of future years:
They will come, all of them, in due time, saying more and more, after I have got through,
Just as I came after others got through as they after others and so on back to the beginning,
No one preferred to the rest.