5. (Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of, all your life?

Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your life?)

6. (And who are you—blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,

Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak a single word?)

7. Let others finish specimens—I never finish specimens,

I shower them by exhaustless laws, as nature does, fresh and modern continually.

8. I give nothing as duties,

What others give as duties, I give as living impulses;

(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)

9. Let others dispose of questions—I dispose of nothing—I arouse unanswerable questions;

Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?

What about these likes of myself, that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

10. Let others deny the evil their enemies charge against them—but how can I the like?

Nothing ever has been, or ever can be, charged against me, half as bad as the evil I really am;

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies—as I myself do;

I charge you, too, forever, reject those who would expound me—for I cannot expound myself,