ence of one’s mortal character upon the sort of afterlife that one will
enjoy:
Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as
the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.“A Song of the Rolling Earth” (“Poem of the Sayers of the Words of the
Earth” in the 1856 edition) shows the persona once again posing as a
translator of the earth’s words, declaring that “amelioration is one of the
earth’s words” and that nature’s clues are audible to those who listen at-
tentively. And the earth’s message, he tells all who will listen, is the heady
news that the magni¤cence of the universe is theirs for the taking—“each
man to himself, and each woman to herself ”—if only they lead forthright
lives:
Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is
solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.A forceful, if rather awkward, stanza from “Song of Providence” hammers
home the thesis that the conduct of one’s earthly life shapes the spiritual
destiny of every man and woman:
The Soul is of itself,
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her
in a day, month, any part of the direct life-time, or the hour
of death, but the same affects him or her onward, afterward
through the indirect life-time.“The Progress of Souls” / 107