In this short Life that only lasts an hour (1292)

In this short Life that only lasts an hour

How much - how little - is within our power

 

By Emily Dickinson

Long, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

Long, too long America
By Walt Whitman