I Was Looking A Long While

   I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for
         myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it;
   It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
         accept nor reject;)
   It is no more in the legends than in all else;
   It is in the present--it is this earth to-day;
   It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past;)
   It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of
         to-day;
   It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
   It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,
         politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of
         nations,
   All for the average man of to-day.