Note 111 — Chapter VII · DEMOCRACY AND STANDARDS
Reading edition
“The American demands a poetry ... that will place in the van and hold up at all hazards the banner of the divine pride of man in himself (the radical foundation of the new religion). Long enough have the People been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to no such poem. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant; and then America will listen with pleased ears.” (Democratic Vistas.)