Towards democracy

478 Towards Democracy

To pass into the bodies of men and women, to be arrayed in their hair, and to look forth out of their eyes ;

To be the long lines of habit in them, the food that is sweet in their mouths, the poison that is bitter ;

‘To be the thoughts that they think, and the dreams that they dream ; to circle very close;

To circle closer than all thought ; to touch and startlelike the sound of distant music heard through the rushing of a storm ;

To be the presentation of new unsuspected ideals:

To be buried in the ground;

To be buried deep in the ground of all existence;

To lie in the soil whence all human life springs, and whither it returns again ;

Listening as in a dream of joy to the sound of innu merable voices,

And to the sound of innumerable footsteps coming nearer through all the ages;

To see and to be unseen; to hear and to be that which no ear hath heard ;

To turn an open impartial eye without blame on every creature ; to hold up a mirror,

So tallying nature that to it all men and things run to look upon themselves and learn their parts ;

To give products and receive materials ;

To have the adit, to be the hidden link, the life which does not appear ;