Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson / [by Ralph Waldo Emerson] ; with an introduction by Nathan Haskell Dole [electronic text]

3.

In unploughed Maine, he sought the lumberer's gang, Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; He trod the unplanted forest-floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone, Where feeds the mouse, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. He saw, beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the Northern bowers. He heard when in the grove, at intervals, With sudden roar the aged pine tree fails,— One crash the death-hymn of the perfect tree, Declares the close of its green century. Low lies the plant to whose creation went Sweet influence from every element; Whose living towers the years conspired to build, Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. Through these green tents, by eldest nature drest, He roamed, content alike with man and beast. Where darkness found him, he lay glad at night; There the red morning touched him with its light. Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, So long he roved at will the boundless shade.

The timid it concerns to ask their way, And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, To make no step until the event is known, And ills to come as evils past bemoan: Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps, To spy what danger on his pathway creeps; Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth; — his hall the azure dome; Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.