O doubters of democracy,
Undo your mean contemptuous art!—
More than in all that poetry has said,
More than in a mound or marble, in the living live the dead.
5 The past has done its reproductive part.
Hear now the cry of the beauty's present needs,
Of comrades leveling a thousand creeds,
Finding futility
In conflict, selfishness, hardness of heart!
10 For love has many poets who can see
Ascending in the sky
Above the shadowy passes
The everlasting hills: humanity.
O doubters of the time to be,
15 What is this might, this mystery,
Moving and singing through democracy,
The music of the masses
And of you and me—
But purging and dynamic poetry!—
20 What is this eagerness from sea to sea
But young divinity!—

I have seen doubters, with a puny joy,
Accept amusement for their little while
And feed upon some nourishing employ
25 But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile—
Protesting that one man can no more move the mass/td>
For good or ill
Than could the ancients kindle the sun
By tying torches to a wheel and rolling it downhill.
30 But not the wet circumference of the seas
Can quench the living light in even these,
These who forget,
Eating the fruits of earth,
That nothing ever has been done
35 To spur the spirit of mankind,
Which has not come to pass
Forth from the heart and mind
Of some one man, through the men birth after birth,
In thoughts that dare
40 And in deeds that share
And in a will resolved to find
A finer breath
Born in the deep maternity of death.
. . . If these be ecstasies of youth,
45 Yet they are news of which all time has need.
If they be lies, tell them yourselves and heed
How poets' twice-told lies become the truth!
5

Select the correct text in the passage.
Which two lines in the first stanza help the reader determine the themes?
excerpt from The New World
by Witter Bynner


O doubters of democracy,
Undo your mean contemptuous art!—
More than in all that poetry has said,
More than in a mound or marble, in the living live the dead.
5 The past has done its reproductive part.
Hear now the cry of the beauty's present needs,
Of comrades leveling a thousand creeds,
Finding futility
In conflict, selfishness, hardness of heart!
10 For love has many poets who can see
Ascending in the sky
Above the shadowy passes
The everlasting hills: humanity.