Lo, the unbounded sea, On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails. The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she… - Walt Whitman

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d, All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely Justified, Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet, (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,) Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

I should like to know, what is life?
Yes indeed — what is life? There’s something in the human critter which only needs to be nudged to reveal itself: something inestimably eloquent, precious: not always observed: it is a folded leaf: not absent because we fail to see it: the right man comes — the right hour; the leaf is lifted. The largest part of our human tragedies are humanly avoidable: they come from greed, from carelessness, from causes not catastrophic, elemental: with more radical good heart most of our woes would disappear.