Towards democracy
Towards Democracy 15
dying races!); Japan and the Isles of the Pacific, and the caravan wanderers and dwellers in thé oases of Sahara.
O glancing eyes! O leaping shining waters! Do I not know that thou Democracy dost control and inspire, that thou, too, hast relations to these—and a certainty—
As surely as Niagara has relations to Erie and Ontario?
Ix
Lo! the spirit floats in the air.
On his lips it kisses the young man from China, and the patient old man, and the spiritual-faced boy ;
And on his lips the long-eyed Japanee; and on his thick lips the Negro:
Come !
And to the forlorn emigrant, to the old Irish woman with shriveled brown anxious face, and to her barefoot beautiful daughter, and to the young fair-haired woman from Sweden:
Come!
And to the Portuguese lad with shining teeth and smiling mouth, and to the long-haired Italian, and to the ruddy Scot ;
And to the young Tamil boy holding up flowers and pouring his morning libation of water to the Sun, and to his grandmother superintending the household with quiet loying care; and to the rows of Hindu villagers squatted by the water tanks at early morning, bathing and chatting, and to the women their wives cleaning their brass-glancing waterpots ; and to the noble Mahratta women, and to the beautiful almond-eyed women of Egypt, and to the shifty clever Eurasian, and to the stunted dweller by the sacred unfrozen lake of Thibet :