Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

II

MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES

MAY-DAY

DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Teaching barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. * 1.1 The air is full of whistlings bland; What was that I heard Out of the hazy land? Harp of the wind, or song of bird, * 1.2 Or vagrant booming of the air, Voice of a meteor lost in day? Such tidings of the starry sphere Can this elastic air convey. Or haply't was the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even into May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay? or hark

Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown. Come the tumult whence it will, Voice of sport, or rush of wings, It is a sound, it is a token That the marble sleep is broken, And a change has passed on things.

When late I walked, in earlier days, All was stiff and stark; Knee-deep snows choked all the ways, In the sky no spark; Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods, Struggling through the drifted roads; The whited desert knew me not, Snow-ridges masked each darling spot; The summer dells, by genius haunted, One arctic moon had disenchanted. All the sweet secrets therein hid By Fancy, ghastly spells undid. Eldest mason, Frost, had piled Swift cathedrals in the wild; The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts In the star-lit minster aisled.

I found no joy: the icy wind Might rule the forest to his mind. Who would freeze on frozen lakes? Back to books and sheltered home, And wood-fire flickering on the walls, To hear, when,'mid our talk and games, Without the baffled North-wind calls. But soft! a sultry morning breaks; * 1.3 The ground-pines wash their rusty green, The maple-tops their crimson tint, On the soft path each track is seen, The girl's foot leaves its neater print. The pebble loosened from the frost Asks of the urchin to be tost. In flint and marble beats a heart, The kind Earth takes her children's part, * 1.4 The green lane is the school-boy's friend, Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, The fresh ground loves his top and ball, The air rings jocund to his call,. The brimming brook invites a leap, He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. * 1.5 The youth. sees omens where he goes, And speaks all languages the rose, The wood-fly mocks with tiny voice The far halloo of human voice; The perfumed berry on the spray Smacks of faint memories far away. A subtle chain of countless rings

The next into the farthest brings, And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form. * 1.6

The cagèd linnet in the Spring Hearkens for the choral glee, When his fellows on the wing Migrate from the Southern Sea; When trellised grapes their flowers unmask, And the new-born tendrils twine, The old wine darkling in the cask Feels the bloom on the living vine, And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring: * 1.7 And so, perchance, in Adam's race, Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace Survived the Flight and swam the Flood, And wakes the wish in youngest blood To tread the forfeit Paradise, And feed once more the exile's eyes; And ever when the happy child In May beholds the blooming wild, And hears in heaven the bluebird sing, 'Onward,' he cries,'your baskets bring,— In the next field is air more mild, And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier spring.'

Not for a regiment's parade, Nor evil laws or rulers made, Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,

But for a lofty sign Which the Zodiac threw, That the bondage-days are told, And waters free as winds shall flow. * 1.8 Lo! how all the tribes combine To rout the flying foe. See, every patriot oak-leaf throws His elfin length upon the snows, Not idle, since the leaf all day Draws to the spot the solar ray, Ere sunset quarrying inches down, And halfway to the mosses brown; While the grass beneath the rime Has hints of the propitious time, And upward pries and perforates Through the cold slab a thousand gates, Till green lances peering through Bend happy in the welkin blue.

As we thaw frozen flesh with snow, So Spring will not her time forerun, Mix polar night with tropic glow, Nor cloy us with unshaded sun, Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance, But she has the temperance Of the gods, whereof she is one,— Masks her treasury of heat Under east winds crossed with sleet. Plants and birds and humble creatures

Well accept her rule austere; Titan-born, to hardy natures Cold is genial and dear. As Southern wrath to Northern right Is but straw to anthracite; As in the day of sacrifice, When heroes piled the pyre, The dismal Massachusetts ice Burned more than others' fires So Spring guards with surface cold The garnered heat of ages old. Hers to sow the seed of bread, That man and all the kinds be fed; And, when the sunlight fills the hours, Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.

Beneath the calm, within the light, A hid unruly appetite Of swifter life, a surer hope, Strains every sense to larger scope, Impatient to anticipate The halting steps of aged Fate. Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl: When Nature falters, fain would zeal Grasp the felloes of her wheel, And grasping give the orbs another whirl. Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball! And sun this frozen side. Bring hither back the robin's call, Bring back the tulip's pride.

Why chidest thou the tardy Spring? The hardy bunting does not chide; The blackbirds make the maples ring With social cheer and jubilee; The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee, The robins know the melting snow; The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed, Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves, Secure the osier yet will hide Her callow brood in mantling leaves,— And thou, by science all undone, Why only must thy reason fail To see the southing of the sun? * 1.9

The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,— Befalls again what once befell; All things return, both sphere and mote, And i shall hear my bluebird's note, And dream the dream of Auburn dell. * 1.10

April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds. The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May, What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; What joy in rosy waves outpoured Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.

Hither rolls the storm of heat; I feel its finer billows beat Like a sea which me infolds; * 1.11 Heat with viewless fingers moulds, Swells, and mellows, and matures, Paints, and flavors, and allures, Bird and brier inly warms, Still enriches and transforms, Gives the reed and lily length, Adds to oak and oxen strength, * 1.12 Transforming what it doth infold, Life out of death, new out of old, Painting fawns' and leopards' fells, Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells, Fires gardens with a joyful blaze Of tulips, in the morning's rays. The dead log touched bursts into leaf, The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf. What god is this imperial Heat, Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat? Doth it bear hidden in its heart Water-line patterns of all art? Is it Dædalus? is it Love? Or walks in mask almighty Jove, And drops from Power's redundant horn All seeds of beauty to be born?

Where shall we keep the holiday, And duly greet the entering May?

Too strait and low our cottage doors, And all unmeet our carpet floors; Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall, Suffice to hold the festival. Up and away! where haughty woods Front the liberated floods: We will climb the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring rivers of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees, Giddy with day, to the topmost spire, Which for a spike of tender green Battered its powdery cap; And the colors of joy in the bird, And the love in its carol heard, Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots; While cheerful cries of crag and plain Reply to the thunder of river and main. * 1.13

As poured the flood of the ancient sea Spilling over mountain chains, Bending forests as bends the sedge, Faster flowing o'er the plains,— A world-wide wave with a foaming edge That rims the running silver sheet,— So pours the deluge of the heat

Broad northward o'er the land, Painting artless paradises, Drugging herbs with Syrian spices, * 1.14 Fanning secret fires which glow In columbine and clover-blow, Climbing the northern zones, Where a thousand pallid towns Lie like cockles by the main, Or tented armies on a plain. The million-handed sculptor moulds Quaintest bud and blossom folds, The million-handed painter pours Opal hues and purple dye; Azaleas flush the island floors, And the tints of heaven reply.

Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring To-day shall all her dowry bring, The love of kind, the joy, the grace, Hymen of element and race, Knowing well to celebrate With song and hue and star and state, With tender light and youthful cheer, The spousals of the new-born year.

Spring is strong and virtuous, Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous, Quickening underneath the mould Grains beyond the price of gold.

So deep and large her bounties are, That one broad, long midsummer day Shall to the planet overpay The ravage of a year of war.

Drug the cup, thou butler sweet, And send the nectar round; The feet that slid so long on sleet Are glad to feel the ground. Fill and saturate each kind With good according to its mind, Fill each kind and saturate With good agreeing with its fate, And soft perfection of its plan— Willow and violet, maiden and man.

The bitter-sweet, the haunting air Creepeth, bloweth everywhere; It preys on all, all prey on it, Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit, Stings the strong with enterprise, Makes travellers long for Indian skies, And where it comes this courier fleet Fans in all hearts expectance sweet, As if to-morrow should redeem The vanished rose of evening's dream. By houses lies a fresher green, On men and maids a ruddier mien, As if Time brought a new relay

Of shining virgins every May, And Summer came to ripen maids To a beauty that not fades.

I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth, Stepping daily onward north To greet staid ancient cavaliers Filing single in stately train. And who, and who are the travellers? They were Night and Day, and Day and Night, Pilgrims wight with step forthright. I saw the Days deformed and low, Short and bent by cold and snow; The merry Spring threw wreaths on them, Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell; Many a flower and many a gem, They were refreshed by the smells They shook the snow from hats and shoon, They put their April raiment on; And those eternal forms, Unhurt by a thousand storms, Shot up to the height of the sky again, And danced as merrily as young men. I saw them mask their awful glance Sidewise meek in gossamer lids; And to speak my thought if none forbids It was as if the eternal gods, Tired of their starry periods, Hid their majesty in cloth

Woven of tulips and painted moth. On carpets green the maskers march Below May's well-appointed arch, Each star, each god, each grace amain, Every joy and virtue speed, Marching duly in her train, And fainting Nature at her need Is made whole again. * 1.15

'T was the vintage-day of field and wood, When magic wine for bards is brewed; Every tree and stem and chink Gushed with syrup to the brink. The air stole into the streets of towns, Refreshed the wise, reformed the clowns, And betrayed the fund of joy To the high-school and medalled boy: On from hall to chamber ran, From youth to maid, from boy to man, To babes, and to old eyes as well. 'Once more,' the old man cried,'ye clouds, Airy turrets purple-piled, Which once my infancy beguiled, Beguile me with the wonted spell. I know ye skilful to convoy The total freight of hope and joy Into rude and homely nooks, Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books, On farmer's byre, on pasture rude,

And stony pathway to the wood. I care not if the pomps you show Be what they soothfast appear, Or if yon realms in sunset glow Be bubbles of the atmosphere. And if it be to you allowed To fool me with a shining cloud, So only new griefs are consoled By new delights, as old by old, Frankly I will be your guest, Count your change and cheer the best. The world hath overmuch of pain,— If Nature give me joy again, Of such deceit I'll not complain.'

Ah! well I mind the calendar, Faithful through a thousand years, Of the painted race of flowers, Exact to days, exact to hours, Counted on the spacious dial Yon broidered zodiac girds. I know the trusty almanac Of the punctual coming-back, On their due days, of the birds. I marked them yestermorn, A flock of finches darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march,— Belike the one they used in parting

Last year from yon oak or larch; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in the apple-tree. I greet with joy the choral trains Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes. Best gems of Nature's cabinet, With dews of tropic morning wet, Beloved of children, bards and Spring, O birds, your perfect virtues bring, Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight, Your manners for the heart's delight, Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, Here weave your chamber weather-proof, Forgive our harms, and condescend To man, as to a lubber friend, And, generous, teach his awkward race Courage and probity and grace! * 1.16

Poets praise that hidden wine Hid in milk we drew At the barrier of Time, When our life was new. We had eaten fairy fruit, We were quick from head to foot, All the forms we looked on shone As with diamond dews thereon.

What cared we for costly joys, The Museum's far-fetched toys? Gleam of sunshine on the wall Poured a deeper cheer than all The revels of the Carnival. We a pine-grove did prefer To a marble theatre, Could with gods on mallows dine, Nor cared for spices or for wine. Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned, Arch on arch, the grimmest land; Whistle of a woodland bird Made the pulses dance, Note of horn in valleys heard Filled the region with romance.

None can tell how sweet, How virtuous, the morning air; Every accent vibrates well; Not alone the wood-bird's call, Or shouting boys that chase their ball, Pass the height of minstrel skill, But the ploughman's thoughtless cry, Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat, And the joiner's hammer-beat, Softened are above their will, Take tones from groves they wandered through Or flutes which passing angels blew. All grating discords melt,

No dissonant note is dealt, And though thy voice be shrill Like rasping file on steel, Such is the temper of the air, Echo waits with art and care, And will the faults of song repair.

So by remote Superior Lake, And by resounding Mackinac, When northern storms the forest shake, And billows on the long beach break, The artful Air will separate Note by note all sounds that grate, Smothering in her ample breast All but godlike words, Reporting to the happy ear Only purified accords. Strangely wrought from barking waves, Soft music daunts the Indian braves,— Convent-chanting which the child Hears pealing from the panther's cave And the impenetrable wild. * 1.17

Soft on the South-wind sleeps the haze: So on thy broad mystic van Lie the opal-colored days, And waft the miracle to man. Soothsayer of the eldest gods, Repairer of what harms betide,

Revealer of the inmost powers Prometheus proffered, Jove denied; Disclosing treasures more than true, Or in what far to-morrow due; Speaking by the tongues of flowers, By the ten-tongued laurel speaking, Singing by the oriole songs, Heart of bird the man's heart seeking; Whispering hints of treasure hid Under Morn's unlifted lid, Islands looming just beyond The dim horizon's utmost bound;— Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid, Or taunt us with our hope decayed? Or who like thee persuade, Making the splendor of the air, The morn and sparkling dew, a snare? Or who resent Thy genius, wiles and blandishment?

There is no orator prevails To beckon or persuade Like thee the youth or maid: * 1.18 Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales, Thy blooms, thy kinds, Thy echoes in the wilderness, Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress, Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.

For thou, O Spring! canst renovate All that high God did first create. Be still his arm and architect, Rebuild the ruin, mend defect; Chemist to vamp old worlds with new, Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue, New tint the plumage of the birds, And slough decay from grazing herds, Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain, Cleanse the torrent at the fountain, Purge alpine air by towns defiled, Bring to fair mother fairer child, Not less renew the heart and brain, Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain, Make the aged eye sun-clear, To parting soul bring grandeur near. Under gentle types, my Spring.Masks the might of Nature's king, An energy that searches thorough From Chaos to the dawning morrow; Into all our human plight, The soul's pilgrimage and flight; In city or in solitude, Step by step, lifts bad to good, Without halting, without rest, Lifting Better up to Best; Planting seeds of knowledge pure, Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.

THE ADIRONDACS * 1.19

A JOURNAL

DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858

Wise and polite,—and if I drew Their several portraits, you would own Chaucer had no such worthy crew, Nor Boccace in Decameron.

WE crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends, Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,— Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac, With skies of benediction, to Round Lake, Where all the sacred mountains drew around us, Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead, And other Titans without muse or name. Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills. We made our distance wider, boat from boat, As each would hear the oracle alone. By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid

Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, Through scented banks of lilies white and gold, Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, On through the Upper Saranac, and up Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass Winding through grassy shallows in and out, Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge, To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. A pause and council: then, where near the head Due east a bay makes inward to the land Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees,— Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby. Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

'Welcome!' the wood-god murmured through the leaves,— 'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.' Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs, Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change. So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways. Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again. Happier that they Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, At the first mounting of the giant stairs. No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, The falling rain will spoil no holiday.

We were made freemen of the forest laws, All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends, Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes, At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded: Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn: A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down: Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to trap or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen! No city airs or arts pass current here. Your rank is all reversed; let men of cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls: They are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity. What make you, master, fumbling at the oar? Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here. The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb; The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, Tell the sun's time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours? All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon; Or, in the evening twilight's latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines; * 1.20 Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist? * 1.21 Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?

Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes their wits at sally and retort, With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumored lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability,—our carbuncle, Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden pot of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. As water poured through hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,

So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn.

Lords of this realms, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter,—willing they, and more adroit. * 1.22

Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,— The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands: But, on the second day, we heed them not, Nays we saluted them Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,— Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted covenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore, Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud, "Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating Food indigestible":—then murmured some, Others applauded him who spoke the truth. * 1.23

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday 'Mid all the hints and glories of the home. For who can tell what sudden privacies Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let Into this Oreads' fended Paradise, As chapels in the city's thoroughfares, Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest. Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke To each apart, lifting her lovely shows To spiritual lessons pointed home, And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense

Inviting to new knowledge, one with old. Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler? Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world! What pictures and what harmonies are thine! The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if't were me? A melancholy better than all mirth. Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs

Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of our mates returning with swift oars. One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, Match God's equator with a zone of art, And lift man's public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linkèd hemispheres attest his deed. We have few moments in the longest life Of such delight and wonder as there grew,— Nor yet unsuited to that solitude: A burst of joy, as if we told the fact To ears intelligent; as if gray rock And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind; As if we men were talking in a vein Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, And a prime end of the most subtle element Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!

Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours. * 1.24

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. * 1.25 The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat (Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had won the brightest laurel of all time. 'T was always thus, and will be; hand and head Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift

The other slow,—this the Prometheus, And that the Jove,—yet, howsoever hid, It was from Jove the other stole his fire, And, without Jove, the good had never been. It is not Iroquois or cannibals, But ever the free race with front sublime, And these instructed by their wisest too, Who do the feat, and lift humanity. Let not him mourn who best entitled was, Nay, mourn not one: let him exult, Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant, And water it with wine, nor watch askance Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit: Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life: But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz? O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears From a log cabin stream Beethoven's notes On the piano, played with master's hand. 'Well done!' he cries;' the bear is kept at bay,

The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire; All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold, This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, This wild plantation will suffice to chase. Now speed the gay celerities of art, What in the desert was impossible Within four walls is possible again,— Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill, Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife Of keen competing youths, joined or alone To outdo each other and extort applause. Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep. Twirl the old wheels! Time takes fresh start again, On for a thousand years of genius more.'

The holidays were fruitful, but must end; One August evening had a cooler breath; Into each mind intruding duties crept; Under the cinders burned the fires of home; Nay, letters found us in our paradise: So in the gladness of the new event We struck our camp and left the happy hills. The fortunate star that rose on us sank not; The prodigal sunshine rested on the land, The rivers gambolled onward to the sea, And Nature, the inscrutable and mute, Permitted on her infinite repose Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.

BRAHMA * 1.26

IF the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings

The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

NEMESIS * 1.27

ALREADY blushes on thy cheek The bosom thought which thou must speak; The bird, how far it haply roam By cloud or isle, is flying home; The maiden fears, and fearing runs Into the charmed snare she shuns; And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is never wide.

Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth? Or prayers the stony Parcæ soothe, Or coax the thunder from its mark? Or tapers light the chaos dark? In spite of Virtue and the Muse, Nemesis will have her dues, And all our struggles and our toils Tighter wind the giant coils.

FATE

DEEP in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great: Unknown to Cromwell as to me Was Cromwell's measure or degree; Unknown to him as to his horse, If he than his groom be better or worse. He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs, With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares, Till late he learned, through doubt and fear, Broad England harbored not his peer: Obeying time, the last to own The Genius from its cloudy throne. For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates. * 1.28

FREEDOM * 1.29

Once I wished I might rehearse Freedom's pæen in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapped his chain. But the Spirit said, 'Not so; Speak it not, or speak it low; Name not lightly to be said, Gift too precious to be prayed, Passion not to be expressed But by heaving of the Breast: Yet,—wouldst thou the mountain find Where this deity is shrined, Who gives to seas and sunset skies Their unspent beauty of suprise, And when it lists him, waken can Brute or savage into man; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And makes thy thoughts archangels be; Freedom's secret wilt thou know?— unsel not with flesh and blood; Loiter not for cloak or food; Right thou feelest, rush to do.'

ODE * 1.30

SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857

O TENDERLY the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one on our desire.

The cannon booms from town to town, Our pulses beat not less, The joy-bells chime their tidings down, Which children's voices bless.

For He that flung the broad blue fold O'er-mantling land and sea, One third part of the sky unrolled For the banner of the free.

The men are ripe of Saxon kind To build an equal state,— To take the statue from the mind And make of duty fate.

United States! the ages plead,— Present and Past in under-song,— Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

For sea and land don't understand, Nor skies without a frown See rights for which the one hand fights By the other cloven down.

Be just at home; then write your scroll Of honor o'er the sea, And bid the broad Atlantic roll, A ferry of the free.

And henceforth there shall be no chain, Save underneath the sea The wires shall murmur through the main Sweet songs of liberty.

The conscious stars accord above, The waters wild below, And under, through the cable wove, Her fiery errands go.

For He that worketh high and wise, Nor pauses in his plan, Will take the sun out of the skies Ere freedom out of man.

BOSTON HYMN * 1.31

READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863

THE word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel,—his name is Freedom,— Choose him to be your king; He shall cut pathways east and west And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and slave: None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall consititue a state.

Go, cut down trees in the forest And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men Can govern the land and sea And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men; 'T is nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again: Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave: Free be his heart and hand henceforth As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature His proper good to flow: As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. * 1.32 Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags, And honor, O South! for his shame; Nevada! coin thy golden crags With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race That sat in darkness long,— Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North, By races, as snow-flakes, And carry my purpose forth, Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark.

VOLUNTARIES * 1.33

I

Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed,— Hapless sire to hapless son,— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when life was done.

What his fault, or what his crime? Or what ill planet crossed his prime? Heart too soft and will too weak To front the fate that crouches near,— Dove beneath the vulture's beak;— Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? Dragged from his mother's arms and breast, Displaced, disfurnished here, His wistful toil to do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer.

Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building for their sons the State, Which they shall rule with pride. They forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by' Union' as the bribe. Destiny sat by, and said, 'Pang for pang your seed shall pay, Hide in false peace your coward head, I bring round the harvest day.'

II

FREEDOM all winged expands, Nor perches in a narrow place; Her broad van seeks unplanted lands; She loves a poor and virtuous race. Clinging to a colder zone Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down, The snowflake is her banner's star, Her stripes the boreal streamers are. Long she loved the Northman well; Now the iron age is done, She will not refuse to dwell With the offspring of the Sun; Foundling of the desert far, Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,

He roves unhurt the burning ways In climates of the summer star, He has avenues to God Hid from men of Northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain, If once the generous chief arrive To lead him willing to be led, For freedom he will strike and strive, And drain his heart till he be dead. * 1.34

III

IN an age of fops and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight,— Break sharply off their jolly games, Forsake their comrades gay And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil and fray? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

IV

O, WELL for the fortunate soul Which Music's wings infold, Stealing away the memory Of sorrows new and old! Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought, Shuts his sense on toys of time, To vacant bosoms brought. But best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Wailed with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain Him duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. * 1.35

Stainless soldier on the walls, Knowing this,—and knows no more,— Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before,— And he who battles on her side, God, though he were ten times slain, Crowns him victor glorified, Victor over death and pain.

V

Blooms the laurel which belongs To the valiant chief who fights; I see the wreath, I hear the songs Lauding the Eternal Rights, Victors over daily wrongs: Awful victors, they misguide Whom they will destroy, And their coming triumph hide In our downfall, or our joy: They reach no term, they never sleep, In equal strength through space abide; Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep, The strong they slay, the swift outstride: Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods, And rankly on the castled steep,— Speak it firmly, these are gods, All are ghosts beside. * 1.36

LOVE AND THOUGHT * 1.37

Two well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the Muse. From the twins is nothing hidden, To the pair is nought forbidden; Hand in hand the comrades go Every nook of Nature through: Each for other they were born, Each can other best adorn; They know one only mortal grief Past all balsam or relief; When, by false companions crossed, The pilgrims have each other lost.

UNA * 1.38

ROVING, roving, as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams; Still for journeys she is dressed; We wander far by east and west.

In the homestead, homely thought, At my work I ramble not; If from home chance draw me wide, Half-seen Una sits beside.

In my house and garden-plot, Though beloved, I miss her not; But one I seek in foreign places, One face explore in foreign faces.

At home a deeper thought may light The inward sky with chrysolite, And I greet from far the ray, Aurora of a dearer day.

But if upon the seas I sail, Or trundle on the glowing rail, I am but a thought of hers, Loveliest of travellers.

So the gentle poet's name To foreign parts is blown by fame; Seek him in his native town, He is hidden and unknown.

BOSTON * 1.39

SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS

THE rocky nook with hilltops three Looked eastward from the farms, And twice each day the flowing sea Took Boston in its arms; The men of yore were stout and poor, And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent They did what freemen can, Their dauntless ways did all men praise, The merchant was a man. The world was made for honest trade,— To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep To them their secret told; Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep, 'Like us be free and bold!' The honest waves refused to slaves The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces, Has lords enough and more;—

We plant and build by foaming seas A city of the poor;— For day by day could Boston Bay Their honest labor overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights, and shall;— Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall, For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsman we promote, Disown the knave and fool; Each honest man shall have his vote, Each child shall have his school. A union then of honest men, Or union never more again.

The wild rose and the barberry thorn Hung out their summer pride, Where now on heated pavements worn The feet of millions stride.

Fair rose the planted hills behind The good town on the bay, And where the western hills declined The prairie stretched away.

What care though rival cities soar Along the stormy coast, Penn's town, New York and Baltimore, If Boston knew the most!

They laughed to know the world so wide; The mountains said, 'Good-day! We greet you well, you Saxon men, Up with your towns and stay!' The world was made for honest trade,— To plant and eat be none afraid.

'For you,' they said, 'no barriers be, For you no sluggard rest; Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to the west.'

O happy town beside the sea, Whose roads lead everywhere to all; Than thine no deeper moat can be, No stouter fence, no steeper wall!

Bad news from George on the English throne; 'You are thriving well,' said he; 'Now by these presents be it known You shall pay us a tax on tea; 'T is very small,—no load at all,— Honor enough that we send the call.'

'Not so,' said Boston,'good my lord, We pay your governors here Abundant for their bed and board, Six thousand pounds a year. (Your Highness knows our homely word) Millions for self-government, But for tribute never a cent.'

The cargo came! and who could blame If Indians seized the tea, Ands chest by chest, let down the same, Into the laughing sea? For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The townsmen braved the English king, Found friendship in the French, And honor joined the patriot ring Low on their, wooden bench.

O bounteous seas that never fail! O day remembered yet! O happy port that spied the sail Which wafted Lafayette! Pole-star of light in Europe's night, That never faltered from the right.

Kings shook with fear, old empires crave The secret force to find Which fired the little State to save The rights of all mankind.

But right is might through all the world; Province to province faithful clung, Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled, Till Freedom cheered and joy-bells rung.

The sea returning day by day Restores the world-wide mart; So let each dweller on the Bay Fold Boston in his heart, Till these echoes be choked with snows, Or over the town blue ocean flows.

Let the blood of her hundred thousands Throb in each manly vein; And the wits of all her wisest, Make sunshine in her brain. For you can teach the lightning speech, And round the globe your voices reach.

And each shall care for other, And each to each shall bend, To the poor a noble brother, To the good an equal friend.

A blessing through the ages thus Shield all thy roofs and towers! GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US, Thou darling town of ours! * 1.40

LETTERS

EVERY day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward, well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear. * 1.41

RUBIES

THEY brought me rubies from the mine, And held them to the sun; I said, they are drops of frozen wine From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,—I thought them hears Of friends to friends unknown; Tides that should warm each neighboring life Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow, To break enchanted ice, And give love's scarlet tides to flow,— When shall that sun arise? * 1.42

MERLIN'S SONG

I * 1.43

Or Merlin wise I learned a song,— Sing it low or sing it loud, It is mightier than the strong, And punishes the proud. I sing it to the surging crowd,— Good men it will calm and cheer, Bad men it will chain and cage— In the heart of the music peals a strain Which only angels hear; Whether it waken joy or rage Hushed myriads hark in vain, Yet they who hear it shed their age, And take their youth again.

II * 1.44

Hear what British Merlin sung, Of keenest eye and truest tongue. Say not, the chiefs who first arrive Usurp the seats for which all strive;

The forefathers this land who found Failed to plant the vantage-ground; Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow. But wilt thou measure all thy road, See thou lift the lightest load. Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, And thou, Cyndyllan's son! beware Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, To falter ere thou thy task fulfil,— Only the light-armed climb the hill. The richest of all lords is Use, And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity: When the star Canope shines in May, Shepherds are thankful and nations gay. The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech: Mask thy wisdom with delight, Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. Of all wit's uses, the main one Is to live well with who has none.

THE TEST

(Musa loquitur.)

I HUNG my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find. All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive? * 1.45

SOLUTION * 1.46

I am the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day. Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought To fire the stagnant earth with thought:

On spawning slime my song prevails, Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales; Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn, Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born. * 1.47 Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race, And Nile substructs her granite base,— Tented Tartary, columned Nile,— And, under vines, on rocky isle, Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek: That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, HOMER sung.

Flown to Italy from Greece, I brooded long and held my peace, For I am wont to sing uncalled, And in days of evil plight Unlock doors of new delight; And sometimes mankind I appalled With a bitter horoscope, With spasms of terror for balm of hope. Then by better thought I lead Bards to speak what nations need; So I folded me in fears, And DANTE searched the triple spheres,.Moulding Nature at his will, So shaped, so colored, swift or still, And, sculptor-like, his large design Etched on Alp and Apennine. * 1.48

Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the frolic light, In trance upborne past mortal goal The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul. Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found; Rehearsed to men the damnèd wails On which the seraph music sails. In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown. The near bystander caught no sound,— Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, And felt, beneath, the quaking ground; And his air-sown, unheeded words, In the next age, are flaming swords.

In newer days of war and trade, Romance forgot, and faith decayed, When Science armed and guided war, And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, When France, where poet never grew, Halved and dealt the globe anew, GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife, Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and mart, to gown and town. Stooping, his finger wrote in clay The open secret of to-day.

So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive.

HYMN * 1.49

SUNG AT THE SECOND CHURCH, AT THE ORDINATION OF REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS

WE love the venerable house Our fathers built to God;— In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod.

Here holy thoughts a light have shed From many a radiant face, And prayers of humble virtue made The perfume of the place.

And anxious hearts have pondered here The mystery of life, And prayed the eternal Light to clear Their doubts, and aid their strife.

From humble tenements around Came up the pensive train, And in the church a blessing found That filled their homes again;

For faith and peace and mighty love That from the Godhead flow, Showed them the life of Heaven above Springs from the life below.

They live with God; their homes are dust; Yet here their children pray, And in this fleeting lifetime trust To find the narrow way.

On him who by the altar stands, On him thy blessing fall, Speak through his lips thy pure commands, Thou heart that lovest all.

NATURE

I

WINTERS know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemonies. Nature, hating art and pains, Baulks and baffles plotting brains; Casualty and Surprise Are the apples of her eyes; But she dearly loves the poor, And, by marvel of her own, Strikes the loud pretender down. For Nature listens in the rose And hearkens in the berry's bell To help her friends, to plague her foes, And like wise God she judges well. Yet doth much her love excel To the souls that never fell, To swains that live in happiness And do well because they please, Who walk in ways that are unfamed, And feats achieve before they're named.

II * 1.50

SHE is gamesome and good, But of mutable mood,— No dreary repeater now and again, She will be all things to all men. She who is old, but nowise feeble, Pours her power into the people, Merry and manifold without bar, Makes and moulds them what they are, And what they call their city way Is not their way, but hers, And what they say they made to-day, They learned of the oaks and firs. She spawneth men as mallows fresh, Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh; She drugs her water and her wheat With the flavors she finds meet, And gives them what to drink and eat; And having thus their bread and growth, They do her bidding, nothing loath. What's most theirs is not their own, But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone, And in their vaunted works of Art The master-stroke is still her part. * 1.51

THE ROMANY GIRL * 1.52

THE sun goes down, and with him takes The coarseness of my poor attire; The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race; You captives of your air-tight halls, Wear out indoors your sickly days, But leave us the horizon walls. * 1.53

And if I take you, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the lady all the while.

If on the heath, below the moon, I court and play with paler blood, Me false to mine dare whisper none,— One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain, For teeth and hair with shopmen deal; My swarthy tint is in the grain, The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild air bloweth in our lungs, The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, The birds gave us our wily tongues, The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you.

DAYS * 1.54

DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

MY GARDEN * 1.55

IF I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void. * 1.56

In my plot no tulips blow,— Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; And rank the savage maples grow From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed, Laid the terraces, one by one; Ebbing later whence it flowed, They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,— The wind and the birds which sowed it; Not for fame, nor by rules of art, Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side Play not in Nature's lawful web, They heed not moon or solar tide,— Five years elapse from flood to ebb. * 1.57

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, And every god,—none did refuse; And be sure at last came Love, And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable, As if one spake to another, In the hemlocks tall, untamable, And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine Ring with the song of the Fates; Infant Bacchus in the vine,— Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime Of the wood-bell's peal and cry, Write in a book the morning's prime, Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods, Of one import, of varied tone; They chant the bliss of their abodes To man imprisoned in his own. * 1.58

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear Seldom in this low life's round Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air And murmurs in the wold Speak what I cannot declare, Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake, The whirlwind in ripples wrote Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake, Cannot be carried in book or urn; Go thy ways now, come later back, On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast, Of better men than live to-day; If who can read them comes at last He will spell in the sculpture,'Stay.'

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT * 1.59

DAY! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places? One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a laborer's lamp? Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man's wood and lake, His park where amber mornings break, And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow? O Day! and is your mightiness A sycophant to smug success? Will the sweet sky and ocean broad Be fine accomplices to fraud? O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray: Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

THE TITMOUSE * 1.60

YOU shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. How should I fight? my foeman fine Has million arms to one of mine: East, west, for aid I looked in vain, East, west, north, south, are his domain. Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; Must borrow his winds who there would come. Up and away for life! be fleet!— The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,— The punctual stars will vigil keep,— Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

Softly,—but this way fate was pointing, 'T was coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, Chic-chic-a-dee-dee! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, 'Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces.'

This poet, though he live apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray.

Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior,

'You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest So frolic, stout and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.'

'T is good will makes intelligence, And I began to catch the sense Of ray bird's song: 'Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors. I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, Than noontide twilights which snow makes With tempest of the blinding flakes. For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin;

And polar frost my frame defied, Made of the air that blows outside.'

With glad remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn; farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shalt be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As't would accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Cæsar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, Pæan! Veni, vidi, vici.

THE HARP * 1.61

ONE musician is sure, His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure, Nor bent to passion frail. Age cannot cloud his memory, Nor grief untune his voice, Ranging down the ruled scale From tone of joy to inward wail, Tempering the pitch of all In his windy cave. He all the fables knows, And in their causes tells,— Knows Nature's rarest moods,' Ever on her secret broods. The Muse of men is coy, Oft courted will not come; In palaces and market squares Entreated, she is dumb; But my minstrel knows and tells The counsel of the gods, Knows of Holy Book the spells, Knows the law of Night and Day, And the heart of girl and boy, The tragic and the gay,

And what is writ on Table Round Of Arthur and his peers; What sea and land discoursing say In sidereal years. He renders all his lore In numbers wild as dreams, Modulating all extremes,— What the spangled meadow saith To the children who have faith; Only to children children sing, Only to youth will spring be spring.

Who is the Bard thus magnified? When did he sing? and where abide?

Chief of song where poets feast Is the wind-harp which thou seest In the casement at my side.

Æolian harp, How strangely wise thy strain! Gay for youth, gay for youth, (Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,) In the hall at summer eve Fate and Beauty skilled to weave. From the eager opening strings Rung loud and bold the song. Who but loved the wind-harp's note? How should not the poet doat

On its mystic tongue, With its primeval memory, Reporting what old minstrels told Of Merlin locked the harp within,— Merlin paying the pain of sin, Pent in a dungeon made of air,— And some attain his voice to hear, Words of pain and cries of fear, But pillowed all on melody, As fits the griefs of bards to be. * 1.62 And what if that all-echoing shell, Which thus the buried Past can tell, Should rive the Future, and reveal What his dread folds would fain conceal? It shares the secret of the earth, And of the kinds that owe her birth. Speaks not of self that mystic tone, But of the Overgods alone: It trembles to the cosmic breath,— As it heareth, so it saith; Obeying meek the primal Cause, It is the tongue of mundane laws. And this, at least, I dare affirm, Since genius too has bound and term, There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet sires Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,

Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,— Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher; Saw bonfires of the harlot flies In the lowland, when day dies; Or marked, benighted and forlorn, The first far signal-fire of morn. These syllables that Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. * 1.63 Therein I hear the Parcæ reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.

Not long ago at eventide, It seemed, so listening, at my side A window rose, and, to say sooth, I looked forth on the fields of youth: I saw fair boys bestriding steeds, I knew their forms in fancy weeds, Long, long concealed by sundering fates, Mates of my youth,—yet not my mates, Stronger and bolder far than I, With grace, with genius, well attired, And then as now from far admired, Followed with love They knew not of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,— Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb! Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil. * 1.64

SEASHORE * 1.65

I HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? Am I not always here, thy summer home? Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? Was ever building like my terraces? Was ever couch magnificent as mine? Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn A little hut suffices like a town. I make your sculptured architecture vain, Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home, And carve the coastwise mountain into caves. Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes, Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea, The opaline, the plentiful and strong, Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July; Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, Purger of earth, and medicine of men; Creating a sweet climate by my breath,

Washing out harms and griefs from memory, And, in my mathematic ebb and flow, Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich are the sea-gods:—who gives gifts but they? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls: They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. For every wave is wealth to Dædalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

I with my hammer pounding evermore The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, Strewing my bed, and, in another age, Rebuild a continent of better men. Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out The exodus of nations: I dispersed Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

I too have arts and sorceries; Illusion dwells forever with the wave. I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal With credulous and imaginative man; For, though he scoop my water in his palm, A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore, I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, To distant men, who must go there, or die.

SONG OF NATURE * 1.66

MINE are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days.

I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies, No tribes my house can fill, I sit by the shining Fount of Life And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers My gardens ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell. * 1.67

I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers Of granite, marl and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,— Where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played; What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand, Made one of day and one of night And one of the salt sea-sand. * 1.68

One in a Judæan manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviors, And bards o'er kings to rule;— But fell the starry influence short, The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again; Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. * 1.69

TWO RIVERS * 1.70

THY summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream. * 1.71

Musketaquit, a goblin strong, Of shard and flint makes jewels gay; They lose their grief who hear his song, And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,— Who drink it shall not thirst again; * 1.72 No darkness stains its equal gleam, And ages drop in it like rain.

WALDEINSAMKEIT * 1.73

I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me.

In plains that room for shadows make Of skirting hills to lie, Bound in by streams which give and take Their colors from the sky;

Or on the mountain-crest sublime, Or down the oaken glade, O what have I to do with time? For this the day was made. * 1.74

Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, And merry is only a mask of sad, But, sober on a fund of joy, The woods at heart are glad. * 1.75

There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain, And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain.

Still on the seeds of all he made The rose of beauty burns; Through times that wear and forms that fade, Immortal youth returns.

The black ducks mounting from the lake, The pigeon in the pines, The bittern's boom, a desert make Which no false art refines.

Down in yon watery nook, Where bearded mists divide, The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, The sires of Nature, hide.

Aloft, in secret veins of air, Blows the sweet breath of song, O, few to scale those uplands dare, Though they to all belong!

See thou bring not to field or stone The fancies found in books; Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, To brave the landscape's looks.

Oblivion here thy wisdom is, Thy thrift, the sleep of cares; For a proud idleness like this Crowns all thy mean affairs.

TERMINUS * 1.76

IT is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economize the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Timely wise accept the terms, Soften the fall with wary foot; A little while Still plan and smile,

And,—fault of novel germs,— Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.' * 1.77

As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 'Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed.' * 1.78

THE NUN'S ASPIRATION * 1.79

THE yesterday doth never smile, The day goes drudging through the while, Yet, in the name of Godhead, I The morrow front, and can defy; Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid. Ah me! it was my childhood's thought, If He should make my web a blot On life's fair picture of delight, My heart's content would find it right. But O, these waves and leaves,— When happy stoic Nature grieves, No human speech so beautiful As their murmurs mine to lull. On this altar God hath built I lay my vanity and guilt; Nor me can Hope or Passion urge Hearing as now the lofty dirge Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn, Nature's funeral high and dim,— Sable pageantry of clouds, Mourning summer laid in shrouds. Many a day shall dawn and die, Many an angel wander by,

And passing, light my sunken turf Moist perhaps by ocean surf, Forgotten amid splendid tombs, Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms. On earth I dream;—I die to be: Time, shake not thy bald head at me. I challenge thee to hurry past Or for my turn to fly too fast. Think me not numbed or halt with age, Or cares that earth to earth engage, Caught with love's cord of twisted beams, Or mired by climate's gross extremes. I tire of shams, I rush to be: I pass with yonder comet free,— Pass with the comet into space Which mocks thy æons to embrace; Æons which tardily unfold Realm beyond realm,—extent untold; No early morn, no evening late,— Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate, Whose shining sons, too great for fame, Never heard thy weary name; Nor lives the tragic bard to say How drear the part I held in one, How lame the other limped away. * 1.80

APRIL * 1.81

THE April winds are magical And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden walks are passional To bachelors and dames. The hedge is gemmed with diamonds, The air with Cupids full, The cobweb clues of Rosamond Guide lovers to the pool. Each dimple in the water, Each leaf that shades the rock Can cozen, pique and flatter, Can parley and provoke. Goodfellow, Puck and goblins, Know more than any book. Down with your doleful problems, And court the sunny brook. The south-winds are quick-witted, The schools are sad and slow, The masters quite omitted The lore we care to know.

MAIDEN SPEECH OF THE ÆOLIAN HARP * 1.82

SOFT and softlier hold me, friends! Thanks if your genial care Unbind and give me to the air. Keep your lips or finger-tips For flute or spinet's dancing chips; I await a tenderer touch, I ask more or not so much: Give me to the atmosphere,— Where is the wind, my brother,—where? Lift the sash, lay md within, Lend me your ears, and I begin. For gentle harp to gentle hearts The secret of the world imparts; And not to-day and not to-morrow Can drain its wealth of hope and sorrow; But day by day, to loving ear Unlocks new sense and loftier cheer. I've come to live with you, sweet friends, This home my minstrel-journeyings ends. Many and subtle are my lays, The latest better than the first, For I can mend the happiest days And charm the anguish of the worst. * 1.83

CUPIDO * 1.84

THE solid, solid universe Is pervious to Love; With bandaged eyes he never errs, Around, below, above. His blinding light He flingeth white On God's and Satan's brood, And reconciles By mystic wiles The evil and the good.

THE PAST * 1.85

THE debt is paid, The verdict said, The Furies laid, The plague is stayed. All fortunes made; Turn the key and bolt the door, Sweet is death forevermore. Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast; Not the gods can shake the Past; Flies-to the adamantine door Bolted down forevermore. None can reënter there,— No thief so politic, No Satan with a royal trick Steal in by window, chink, or hole, To bind or unbind, add what lacked, Insert a leaf, or forge a name, New-face or finish what is packed, Alter or mend eternal Fact. * 1.86

THE LAST FAREWELL * 1.87

LINES WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR'S BROTHER, EDWARD BLISS EMERSON, WHILST SAILING OUT OF BOSTON HARBOR, BOUND FOR THE ISLAND OF PORTO RICO, IN 1832 * 1.88

FAREWELL, ye lofty spires That cheered the holy light! Farewell, domestic fires That broke the gloom of night! Too soon those spires are lost, Too fast we leave the bay, Too soon by ocean lost From hearth and home away, Far away, far away.

Farewell the busy town, The wealthy and the wise, Kind smile and honest frown From bright, familiar eyes. All these are fading now; Our brig hastes on her way, Her unremembering prow Is leaping o'er the sea, Far away, far away.

Farewell, my mother fond, Too kind, too good to me; Nor pearl nor diamond Would pay my debt to thee. But even thy kiss denies Upon my cheek to stay; The winged vessel flies, And billows round her play, Far away, far away.

Farewell, my brothers true, My betters, yet my peers; How desert without you My few and evil years! But though aye one in heart, Together sad or gay, Rude ocean doth us part; We separate to-day, Far away, far away.

Farewell, thou fairest one, Unplighted yet to me, Uncertain of thine own I gave my heart to thee. That untold early love I leave untold to-day, My lips in whisper move Farewell to... Far away, far away.

Farewell I breathe again To dim New England's shore; My heart shall beat not when I pant for thee no more. In yon green palmy isle, Beneath the tropic ray, I murmur never while For thee and thine I pray; Far away, far away.

IN MEMORIAM

E.B.E.

I MOURN upon this battle-field, But not for those who perished here. Behold the river-bank Whither the angry farmers came, In sloven dress and broken rank, Nor thought of fame. Their deed of blood All mankind praise; Even the serene Reason says, It was well done. The wise and simple have one glance To greet yon stern head-stone, Which more of pride than pity gave To mark the Briton's friendless grave. Yet it is a stately tomb; The grand return Of eve and morn, The year's fresh bloom, The silver cloud, Might grace the dust that is most proud. * 1.89

Yet not of these I muse In this ancestral place, But of a kindred face That never joy or hope shall here diffuse.

Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star! What hast thou to do with these Haunting this bank's historic trees? Thou born for noblest life, For action's field, for victor's car, Thou living champion of the right? To these their penalty belonged: I grudge not these their bed of death, But thine to thee, who never wronged The poorest that drew breath.

All inborn power that could Consist with homage to the. good Flamed from his martial eye; He who seemed a soldier born, He should have the helmet worn, All friends to fend, all foes defy, Fronting foes of God and man, Frowning down the evil-doer, Battling for the weak and poor. His from youth the leader's look Gave the law which others took, And never poor beseeching glance Shamed that sculptured countenance.

There is no record left on earth, Save in tablets of the heart, Of the rich inherent worth, Of the grace that on him shone, Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit: He could not frame a word unfit, An act unworthy to be done; Honor prompted every glance, Honor came and sat beside him, In lowly cot or painful road, And evermore the cruel god Cried "Onward!" and the palm-crown showed, Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with hear to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes, With budding power in college-halls, As pledged in coming days to forge Weapons to guard the State, or scourge Tyrants despite their guards or walls. On his young promise Beauty smiled, Drew his free homage unbeguiled, And prosperous Age held out his hand, And richly his large future planned, And troops of friends enjoyed the tide,— All, all was given, and only health denied.

I see him with superior smile Hunted by Sorrow's grisly train In lands remote, in toil and pain,

With angel patience labor on, With the high port he wore erewhile, When, foremost of the youthful band, The prizes in all lists he won; Nor bate one jot of heart or hope, * 1.90 And, least of all, the loyal tie Which holds to home'neath every sky, The joy and pride the pilgrim feels In hearts which round the hearth at home Keep pulse for pulse with those who roam.

What generous beliefs console The brave whom Fate denies the goal! If others reach it, is content; To Heaven's high will his will is bent. Firm on his heart relied, What lot soe'er betide, Work of his hand He nor repents nor grieves, Pleads for itself the fact, As unrepenting Nature leaves Her every act.

Fell the bolt on the branching oak; The rainbow of his hope was broke; No craven cry, no secret tear,— He told no pang, he knew no fear;

Its peace sublime his aspect kept, His purpose woke, his features slept; And yet between the spasms of pain His genius beamed with joy again.

O'er thy rich dust the endless smile Of Nature in thy Spanish isle Hints never loss or cruel break And sacrifice for love's dear sake, Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays. What matters how, or from what ground, The freed soul its Creator found? Alike thy memory embalms That orange-grove, that isle of palms, And these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold Root in the blood of heroes old.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Page 163, note 1. Of the following six lines in one of the verse-books all but the first were in the first edition:—

  Dripping dew-cold daffodillies,Making drunk with drought of lilies,Girls are peeling the sweet willow,Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,And troops of boys shouting with whoop, and hilloaAnd hip, hip, three times three.
• * 1.2

  Page 163, note 2. This line with a suggestion of Englishpastoral, found in the first edition, was omitted by the author:—

  Or clapping of shepherd's hands.
• * 1.3

  Page 165, note 1. The stanza had, in the first edition, a different ending:—

  The cowslips make the brown brook gay;A happier hour, a longer day.Now the sun leads in the May,Now desire of action wakes,And the wish to roam.
• * 1.4

  Page 165, note 2. In the verse-book here followed the couplet —

  Her cottage chamber, wall and beam,Glows with the maid's delicious dream.
• * 1.5

  Page 165, note 3. It seems as if it must have been by accident that the remarkable lines, concluding this stanza, beginning

  "The youth sees omens,"

  —six of which, in a different order, served as the motto to the second edition of Nature, in 1849, —were omitted in the posthumous edition. They followed immediately in this place.
• * 1.6

  Page 166, note 1. These last four lines are often quoted to show how early Mr. Emerson accepted the doctrine of evolution. It is not certain in what year they were written, but a sentence in the unpublished lecture on the Humanity of Science, given in Boston in 1836, has exactly the same thought. He alludes to Lamarck as

  "finding a monad of organic life common to every animal, and becoming a worm, a mastiff, or a man, according to circumstances. He says to the caterpillar, How dost thou, brother? Please God, you shall yet be a philosopher."

  The ancient philosophers, as well as the modern savans, taught Emerson evolution. To the first edition of Nature Mr. Emerson prefixed a motto from Plotinus, and Dr. William T. Harris finds the thought of the later motto in these words from the same source:

  "We might say that all beings, not only the rational ones but even the irrational ones, the plants and even the soil that bears them, aspire to attain conscious knowledge."

  In his journal for 1849 Mr. Emerson quotes this sentence from Stallo:

  "The development of all individual forms will be spiral."

  — General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature; Boston, 1848.
• * 1.7

  Page 166, note 2. Mr. Nicholas Longworth, who practised wine-making on a large scale near Cincinnati, was Mr. Emerson's host when he lectured there, and, according to Mr. M.D. Conway, suggested this thought when he showed his wine-cellars to his guest, by telling him of the renewed activity of fermentation in the Spring.
• * 1.8

  Page 167, note 1. Journal, 1856.

  "April 5, Walden fired a cannonade yesterday of a hundred guns, but not in honor of the birth of Napoleon."

  In Concord, by village comity, the two field-pieces of the Concord Artillery Company were too often lent to political enthusiasts to celebrate the election of their pro-slavery candidate, and the editor thinks that he remembers their firing, on the news of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
• * 1.9

  Page 169, note 1. It is interesting to see how the association of blessed warmth and life with his favorite South-wind led the author to forget that the southing of the sun meant the coming of winter. Yet

  "the northing of the sun"

  would have a comfortless sound.
• * 1.10

  Page 169, note 2. In his college days the boy must often have gone to the beautiful wooded hills of Mount Auburn, not then a cemetery, above the broad marshes of the Charles River. Journal, 1861.

  "Ah, the powers of the Spring, and ah, the voice of the bluebird and the witchcraft of the Mount Auburn dell in those days!"
• * 1.11

  Page 170, note 1. Journal, 10 June, 1838.

  "Noon. Mercury, 90° in the shade. River of heat, yea, a circumambient sea. Welcome as truly as finer and coarser influences to this mystic solitary 'purple island' that I am! I celebrate the holy hour at church amid these fine Creative deluges of light and heat which evoke so many gentle traits, gentle and bold in man and woman. Man in Summer is Man intensated."
• * 1.12

  Page 170, note 2. These lines of the original were omitted:

  Boils the world in tepid lakes,Burns the world, yet burnt remakes;Enveloping heat, enchanted robe,Wraps the daisy and the globe.
• * 1.13

  Page 171, note 1. In one of the verse-books I find the original rhapsody of this part of the poem, which runs thus:

  The Spring comes up from the SouthAnd Earth and air are over flowed,Earth with the melted ice,And air with love infusion.There is no house or hallCan hold her festival.We will go to her haughty woodsFronting the liberated floods; We will go to the relenting mountains,And listen to the uproar of joy,And see the sparkle of the 'delivered rivers,And mark the rivers of sapMounting in the pipes of the trees,And see the colors of love in birds,And in frogs and lizards,And in human cheeks,In the song of birdsAnd songs of men.
• * 1.14

  Page 172, note 1. Here are some notes on Nature's spices, from a verse-book:—

  Spices in the plants that runTo bring their first fruits to the sun,Earliest heats that follow frore,Nerved leaf of hellebore,Scarlet maple-keys that burnAbove the sassafras and fern,Frost survivors, berries red,Checkerberry,—children's bread,—Silver birch and blackWith the selfsame spice to findIn polygala's root and rind;Mouse-ear, cowslip, wintergreen,Which by their beauty may repelThe frost from harming what is well.
• * 1.15

  Page 175, note 1. The divine days in lowly disguise often appear in Mr. Emerson's writings in prose and verse: at best here and in the poem "Days," but also in "Works and Days" ( Society and Solitude, p. 168) and in the first paragraph of the "Lecture on the Times," in Nature, Addresses and Lectures.
• * 1.16

  Page 177, note 1. This affectionate address to the birds may be found in another version among the "Fragments on Nature," in the Appendix to the Poems.
• * 1.17

  Page 179, note 1. Mr. Emerson was told in 1874, by his brother-in-law, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, that while making a geological Survey near Pulpit Rock, on Lake Superior, he heard music like rhythmical organ or vocal chantings, and believed it to come from some singers. He went on a little farther and the music ceased; in another direction, and he heard it again; and by and by perceived that it was the sound of the beating waves on the shore, deprived of its harshness by the atmosphere. This phenomenon, which he called Analyzed Sound, he had never seen treated scientifically, except in a paper by Dr. Wollaston.

  I myself, while going across the Plains in an emigrants' caravan in July, 1862, when in the neighborhood of Fort Laramie, strayed alone three or four hundred yards from our camp into a grove of large cottonwoods on the shore of the North Platte River. Suddenly I heard wonderful music not far away, which I could not account for. It seemed loud but rather sad, perhaps suggesting cathedral music, yet was indistinct and seemed unnatural. It was wholly unlike the tom-tom and hideous chanting of the Sioux, and no white settlement or gathering was near except our camp. On my return thither I asked about the music. No one had heard it. The day was cold and cloudy, after great heat,—a brisk norther blowing. We were close by the broad, rushing Platte leaping in short waves in the wind. Only some time after my return did I hear from my uncle of his similar experience.

  In "May-Day," as first published, here followed the passage on the Æolian Harp which, in the Selected Poems, Mr. Emerson preferred to print as a separate poem. It appears as such in this volume.
• * 1.18

  Page 180, note 1. From this place was omitted the line,

  Nor noon nor eve this music fails.
• * 1.19

  THE ADIRONDACS. Page 182. In August, 1858, Mr. William J. Stillman, an artist by profession, but a man almost of the versatility in accomplishment of The Admirable Crichton, as painter, writer, critic, foreign consul (in which service he showed himself a chivalrous Philhellene), and last, not least, an accomplished woodsman and hunter, led a party of his friends into the then primæval forest of the Adirondac Mountains. The party were, Stillman, Agassiz, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, the comparative anatomist; Samuel G. Ward, a near friend of Mr. Emerson's; Dr. Estes Howe, John Holmes (brother of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes), Horatio Woodman, Dr. Amos Binney, and Emerson. Mr. Stillman in his autobiographyThe Autobiography of a Journalist gives a very interesting account of this company, the region, and their adventures. The following notes of the trip I find in Mr. Emerson's journals. All readers of Lowell will feel pleasure in reading the unexpected postscript to the osprey-nest story.

  "Adirondac, August 7th, 1858. Follansbee's Pond. It should be called Stillman's henceforward, from the good camp which this gallant artist has built, and the good party he has led and planted here for the present at the bottom of the little bay which lies near the head of the lake.

  "The lake is two miles long, 1 to 1/2 mile wide, and surrounded by low mountains. Norway pine and white pine abound.

  "On the top of a large white pine, in a bay, was an osprey's nest, around which the ospreys were screaming, 5 or 6. We thought there were young birds in it, and sent Preston to the top. This looked like an adventure. The tree must be 150 feet high at least; 60 feet clean straight stem, without a single branch, and, as Lowell and I measured it by the tape as high as we could reach, 14 ft. 6 inches in girth. Preston took advantage of a hemlock close by it and climbed till he got on the branches, then went to the top of the pine and found the nest empty, tho' the great birds wheeled and screamed about him. He said he could climb the bare stem of the pine, 'tho' it would be awful hard work.' When he came down, I asked him to go up it a little way, which he did, clinging to the corrugations of the bark. Afterwards Lowell watched for a chance to shoot the osprey, but he soared magnificently and would not alight.

  "The pond is totally virgin soil, without a clearing in any point, and covered with primitive woods, rock-maple, beech, spruce, white cedar, arbor vitæ. We have seen bald eagles, loons, ravens, kingfishers, ducks, tatlers. We have killed 2 deer yesterday, both in the lake, and otherwise fed our party with lake-trout and river-trout. The wood-thrush we heard at Stephen Bartlett's carry, but not since, and no other thrush.

  "River, lake and brook trout cannot be scientifically discriminated, nor yet male from female.

  "Lowell, next morning, was missing at breakfast, and when he came to camp told me he had climbed Preston's pine-tree."

  Mr. Stillman painted the forest camp and the company. Mr. Herbert W. Gleason's remarkably successful photograph of the painting (left to the Concord Library by Judge Hoar) might almost seem a photograph from Nature, so faithfully did Mr. Stillman give the character and the values of the trees. At the left of the picture, Agassiz, helped by the tall Dr. Wyman, is dissecting a fish, while Dr. Estes Howe looks on, and Mr. Holmes, who was lame, sits close by. On the right, Dr. Binhey is aiming his title at a mark, and a little behind, Lowell and Judge Hoar are waiting their turn to shoot, and Mr. Woodman sits on the ground. The tall, lean figure behind the marksman is the painter himself, hardly distinguishable in the photograph, their tutor in the art of shooting, of which he was master. The guides at the right of the picture critically watch the mark to see the results of the amateurs.

  Between the groups, admiring their accomplishments, which are yet foreign to him, but more occupied with Nature in her columned temple, is the poet. The reproduction is too small to do justice to the figure and attitude, which in the picture are given with wonderful success, and but for the unwonted flannel shirt, it might well represent him in his daily commune with the pines.
• * 1.20

  Page 186, note 1. A remarkable picture, "The Procession of the Pines," was painted of this subject by Mr. Stillman, huge Norway pines on a high promontory standing black against the orange twilight glow, and reflected in the still lake.
• * 1.21

  Page 186, note 2. This was Mr. Emerson's own experience: paddled noiselessly by the guide, in a boat with torch and reflector in the bow, he was bidden to shoot at the stating "deer" among the lily-pads by the shore. The "square mist" was too much of an illusion, even to the student of Oriental Mayas; he did not fire, and in an instant it was gone.
• * 1.22

  Page 188, note 1. An Adirondac Club was formed, and Mr. Stillman succeeded in buying for them a lake (Ampersand) and its enclosing mountains, sold for unpaid taxes, at a ridiculously low price. But some people of that part of New York, understanding that Boston capitalists had bought a large tract, could not credit the avowed purpose of the buyers, and, supposing that they knew of some coming railroad and had designs on the lumber, redeemed the land. The camp at Lake Ampersand was, however, occupied by the Club in 1859, but Mr. Emerson did not go there.
• * 1.23

  Page 189, note 1. Mr. Emerson always held that the introverted eye, and apprehension, had much to do with perverted digestion.
• * 1.24

  Page 192, note 1. Here is an instance of the interest and pride which this man of the spirit took even in the application of scientific discovery to the convenience of man. It represented an advance and ascent, and this particular discovery was to weld the races together in brotherhood. A prophecy of this event he wrote in his Concord

  "Ode for the Fourth of July"

  of the previous year.
• * 1.25

  Page 192, note 2. The trial for the passage in the versebook reads thus:—

  To be a brain,Or to obey the brain of upstart man,And shake the slumbers of a million years.
• * 1.26

  BRAHMA. Page 195. This poem was one of the four which Mr. Emerson contributed to the first number of the Atlantic Monthly, in November, 1857. In his note-book for the year before, where it is called "The Song of the Soul," are many pages of extracts from the Hindoo scriptures, yet not those to which the poem gives expression. The first appearance of the doctrine is found in an extract from Parmenides given in the notes on Degerando's Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, made by Mr. Emerson in 1830:

  "Thought and the object of thought are but one."

  In the year 1845 he was reading the Vishnu Purana, and made these among other extracts:—

  "He who eternally restrains this and the other world, and all beings therein, who standing in the earth is other than the earth, whom the earth knows not, whose body the earth is, who interiorly restrains the earth, the same is thy soul, and the Internal Check immortal."

  "What living creature slays or is slain? What living creature preserves or is preserved? Each is his own destroyer or preserver, as he follows evil or good."

  The latter extract he thus rendered in 1845:—

  What creature slayeth or is slain?What creature saves or savèd is?His life will either lose or gain,As he shall follow harm or bliss.

  Dr. William T. Harris, in his interesting chapter on Emerson's Orientalism,Genius and Character of Emerson; Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy sheds much light on the origin of the poem, quoting various passages in the Bhagavat-Gita. The thought of the first verse is thus rendered by Thomson in his translation of the second chapter:—

  "He who believes that this spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed, both of these are wrong in judgment. It neither kills nor is killed. It is not born nor dies at any time. It has no origin, nor will it ever have an origin. Unborn, changeless, eternal, both as to future and past time, it is not slain when the body is killed."

  Many passages show the independence of Brahma of Time and Space, and the absence in Indian philosophy of the dualism of the Persians, believing in separate principles of Good and Evil; thoughts conveyed in the second verse.

  The equivalent of the last line in the third verse Dr. Harris finds in the tenth chapter, where Brahma says,

  "Of the Vedas, I am the Sáma-Veda. I am the Vrihatsaman among the hymns."

  The "Strong Gods" of the fourth verse are Indra, god of the sky and wielder of the thunderbolt; Agni, the god of fire; and Yama, the god of death and judgment. These shall finally be absorbed into Brahma. The "Sacred Seven" are the Maharshis or highest saints.

  The last line finds its origin in the eighteenth chapter:—

  "Abandoning all religious duties, seek me as thy refuge. I will deliver thee from all sin. Be not anxious."

  The striking passage from the Oriental scriptures with which the essay on Immortality concludes might well be read in connection with this poem.

  In "The Sphinx," the line,

  Thou art the unanswered question,

  is matched by that in this poem,

  I am the doubter and the doubt.

  In a little book in which Mr. Emerson collected quotations concerning Love, he wrote,

  "The best word I know on the subject is the motto on a little engraving of the heavenly Cupid, who is represented as turning his head to look down on the towers of Heaven, and underneath is written Superna respicit Amor,—He looketh back on Heaven."

  In spite of the difficulties which "Brahma" presented to many minds, and the ridicule which it excited, it presented no difficulty to others who had no Oriental knowledge except that of the New Testament. A little school-girl was bidden by her teacher to learn some verses of Emerson. Next day she recited" Brahma." The astonished teacher asked why she chose that poem. The child answered that she tried several, but couldn't understand them at all, so learned this one,

  "for it was so easy. It just means 'God everywhere.'"

  Mr. Emerson, much amused when people found "Brahma" puzzling, said to his daughter,

  "If you tell them to say Jehovah instead of Brahma they will not feel any perplexity."
• * 1.27

  NEMESIS. Page 196. This poem, from May-Day, called "Destiny" in the verse-books, is here restored.
• * 1.28

  FATE. Page 197, note 1.

  "The reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all anybody can tell you about it."

  —"Character," Essays, Second Series.

  "He [man] thinks his fate alien because the copula is hidden. But the soul contains the event that shall befall it."

  —"Fate," Conduct of Life.
• * 1.29

  FREEDOM. Page 198. In the autumn of 1853 Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal the beginnings of this poem expressing his feeling that no muse would help should he attack in song African Slavery, the doleful theme that recurred each morning when he woke. But in life and his private and public speech he was true to Freedom.

  In the first form, the lines, after the fourth, ran thus:—

  But the God said,, Not so;Theme not this for lyric flow,Keep thy counsel soft and low;Name too holy to be said,Gift too precious to be prayed,Counsel not to be exprest,But by will of glowing breast.But the power by heaven adored,With Truth and Love the Triune Lord,When it listed woke againBrutish millions into men,' etc.The last line appears also in the forms,"Right thou feelest rashly do," or, "instant do."
• * 1.30

  ODE. Page 199. Mr. Emerson was reluctant to mount Pegasus to war against the enemies of Freedom; but when, as he said in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law ( Miscellanies), it required him to become a slave-hunter, he was stirred to plead her cause in verse, of which this and the two following poems are examples.

  The occasion on which this was sung was a breakfast in the Town Hall, on the holiday morning, to raise money for the improvement of the new cemetery in Sleepy Hollow.
• * 1.31

  BOSTON HYMN. Page 201. In January, 1862, in an address called "American Civilization" given before the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Mr. Emerson had earnestly urged the emancipation of the slaves. On the first day of the next year, when President Lincoln's Proclamation went into effect, Mr. Emerson read this poem at a great celebration of the event in Boston. It was published in the Atlantic Monthlyfor February, 1863.
• * 1.32

  Page 204, note 1. In an address before the Anti-Slavery Society in New York in 1855, Mr. Emerson had urged the buying by the people of the whole slave property of the South:—

  "I say, Buy! never conceding the right of the planter to own, but acknowledging the calamity of his position, and willing to bear a countryman's share in relieving him, and because it is the only practical course and is innocent.... We shall one day bring the States shoulder to shoulder, and the citizens man to man, to exterminate slavery. It was said a little while ago that it would cost a thousand or twelve hundred millions, now it is said it would cost two thousand millions; such is the enhancement of property. Well, was there ever any contribution that was so enthusiastically paid as this will be? The United States will be brought to give every inch of their public lands for a purpose like this. Every State will contribute its surplus revenue. Every man will bear his part. We will have a chimney tax. We will give up our coaches and wine and watches. The church will melt her plate. The father of his country shall wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument;—Franklin will wait for his; the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs; and the patient Columbus, who waited all his mortality for justice, shall wait a part of immortality also.... The rich shall give of their riches; the merchants of their commerce; the mechanics of their strength; the needlewomen will give, and children can have a Cent Society. If, really, the thing could come to a negotiation and a price were named, I do not think that any price, rounded upon an estimate that figures could fairly represent, would be unmanageable. Every man in this land would give a week's work to dig away this accursed mountain of slavery, and force it forever out of the world."
• * 1.33

  VOLUNTARIES. Page 205. This poem was printed in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1863.
• * 1.34

  Page 207, note 1. In July, 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who in face of a half-hostile public opinion had given up his commission in a favorite Massachusetts regiment to take command of one of the first enlisted colored regiments, largely made up of ex-slaves, had been killed with many of his officers and men on the slopes of Fort Wagner. This poem may be regarded as their dirge.

  Mrs. Ednah Cheney describes a meeting, during the Civil War, presided over by Father Taylor, of the friends of this regiment. She says that, during the meeting,

  "Mr. Emerson came in from the ante-room with his face on fire with indignation, as I never saw it on any other occasion, and announced to the audience that he had just learned that South Carolina had given out the threat that colored soldiers, if captured, should not be treated as prisoners, but be put to death. 'What answer does Massachusetts send back to South Carolina?' he said. 'Two for one!' shouted voices in the audience. 'Is that the answer that Massachusetts sends?' he asked; and the audience responded with applause. He retired from the platform, it seemed to me a little appalled at the spirit he had raised."
• * 1.35

  Page 208, note 1. The last four lines of the stanza were added by Mr. Emerson in Selected Poems.
• * 1.36

  Page 209, note 1. The last stanza suggests the following passages, the first being from the journal of January, 1861, three months before the outbreak of war.

  "The furious slaveholder does not see that the one thing he is doing by night and by day is to destroy slavery. They who help and they who hinder are all equally diligent in hastening its downfall. Blessed be the inevitabilities."

  "The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of mankind that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of Kinde or Nature, grows over us like grass....

  "Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams."— Representative Men, pp. 177, 185, 186.
• * 1.37

  LOVE AND THOUGHT. Page 210. With this poem may be compared the seventh verse in "My Garden," and passages in "Love" ( Essays, First Series, pp. 175-177) and in "Manners" ( Essays, Second Series, pp. 150, 151).
• * 1.38

  UNA. Page 210. The solution of the pleasing fiddle "Una," restored here to the place it held in the volume May-Day, cannot be given with authority. It might be the sense of the general beauty refreshed in a poetical mind by new scenes and friends met in travel—the momentary opening of new vistas of promise.
• * 1.39

  BOSTON. Page 212. Although this poem did not come toits birthday until December 16, 1873, when Mr. Emerson read it in Faneuil Hall, on the Centennial Celebration of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, it was conceived years before. Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal in 1842:—

  "I have a kind of promise to write, one of these days, a verse or two to the praise of my native city, which in common days we often rail at, yet which has great merits to usward. That too, like every city, has certain virtues, as a museum of the arts. The parlors of private collectors, the Athenæum Gallery, and the college become the city of the city. Then a city has this praise, that as the bell or band of music is heard outside beyond the din of carts, so the beautiful in architecture, or in political and social institutions, endures; all else comes to nought, so that the antiquities and permanent things in each city are good and fine."

  On his walks with his children on Sunday afternoons Mr. Emerson would often recite poetry to them, and they remember well his telling of his desire to write his Boston poem, and his pleasure in this image, —

  And twice a day the flowing seaTakes Boston in its arms.

  In his manuscript it opens thus: —

  The land that has no songShall have a song to-day:The granite hills are dumb too long,The vales have much to say:For you can teach the lightning speech,And round the globe your voices reach.

  Mr. Emerson was never able to finish the poem to his satisfaction. He wished to have a sort of refrain of two rhyming lines at the end of each verse, but after his illness in 1872 his powers of composition failed, and but a portion of his verses were thus rounded out.

  The poem appeared first in print in the Atlantic Monthlyfor February, 1876, and in Mr. Emerson's Selected Poems, published the same year, it was the concluding poem.

  The motto of Boston, which precedes the poem, he translates thus in the last verse,—

  GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US.
• * 1.40

  Page 217, note 1. The poem was begun in the sad days preceding the war, when its author blushed for the timidity shown by many of Boston's first citizens, scholars and merchants, and their subservience in the interests of union and commerce to the demands made by the slave-power upon their honor and conscience. When the war had cleared the air, the poem was quite remodelled in a happier day, for the "Boston Tea-Party" celebration.

  The following are some of the verses, composed at a sadder time, which, in the early form, followed the lines on Lafayette: —

  O pity that I pause!The song, disdaining, shunsTo name the noble sires becauseOf the unworthy sons;For what avail the plough or sail,Or land or life, if freedom fail?

  But there was chaff within the flour,And one was false in ten,And reckless clerks in lust of powerForgot the rights of men;Cruel and blind did file their mind,And sell the blood of human kind.

  Your town is full of gentle namesBy patriots once were watchwords made;Those war-cry names are muffled shamesOn recreant sons mislaid.What slave shall dare a name to wearOnce Freedom's passport everywhere?

  Oh welaway! if this be so,And man cannot afford the right, And if the wage of love be woe,And honest dealing yield despite.For never will die the captive's cryOn the echoes of God till Right draws nigh.

  Here is a verse written at another time of patriotic mortification:—

  O late to learn, O long betrayed,O credulous men of toil,Who took the traitor to your hearthsWho came those hearths to spoil.O much-revering Boston townWho let the varlet stillRecite his false, insulting taleOn haughty Bunker Hill.

  The following fragment in lighter vein also occurs in the verse-book: —

  O Boston city, lecture-hearing,O Unitarian, God-fearing,But more, I fear, bad men revering,Too civil by half; thine evil guestMakes thee his byword and his jest,And scorns the men that honeyed the pest, —Piso and Atticus with the rest.Thy fault is much civility,Thy bane respectability,And thou hadst been as wise and wiserLacking the Daily Advertiser.Ah, gentlemen—for you are gentle—And mental maids, not sentimental—

  In the volume called Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers, is included Mr. Emerson' s lecture "Boston," in which he shows his pride and interest in his native town. Mrs. Ednah Cheney contributed an interesting chapter on "Emerson and Boston" to the book published in 1885 by the Concord School of Philosophy, called Genius and Character of Emerson.
• * 1.41

  LETTERS. Page 217, note 2. The poem at first began,

  Every morning brings a ship;Every ship brings a word.

  Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal,

  "Hear what the morning says, and believe that."
• * 1.42

  RUBIES. Page 218, note 1. There is another pleasing form of the last verse:—

  But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,To break the wine-drop's prisonAnd give love's scarlet tides to flow,—That sun is yet unrisen.
• * 1.43

  MERLIN'S SONG. I. Page 218. This poem was suggested by the specimens of Welsh Bardic poems which Mr. Emerson took so much pleasure in, and of which he gives specimens in "Poetry and Imagination" ( Letters and Social Aims, pp. 58, 59), one being not unlike this poem. In the journals are similar passages of which it is hard to tell whether they are from the Bards, or Mr. Emerson cast his own thought in that form,—as the following:—

  "I know a song which, though it be sung never so loud, few can hear,—only six or seven or eight persons; yet they who hear it become young again. When it is sung, the stars twinkle gladly, and the moon bends nearer the earth."
• * 1.44

  MERLIN'S SONG. II. Page 218. Although there seems entire fitness in printing this song of Merlin, which Mr. Emerson used for the motto to "Considerations by the Way" in the Conduct of Life, in connection with the preceding one, they never appear together in the verse-books.
• * 1.45

  THE TEST. Page 220, note 1. This poem, the author's test of scholars in guessing the five poetic teachers of the race, appeared, with no Solution, in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1861. Mr. Emerson did not prize the poems sufficiently to include them in the Selected Poems.
• * 1.46

  SOLUTION. Page 220. I believe the early rhythmic ventares from which this poem grew in time must interest some readers, and therefore give them in part.

  The older one (close to a rehearsal for "Alphonso of Castile") begins thus:—

  Clouds on clouds,Thro' clouds of fire and seas of mistBurned the globe of amethyst,Old forces hardly yet subsideWithin the bounds of time and tide:Saurian, snake and dragon canSlowly ripen into man.Asia spawned its shepherd race,Egypt built its granite base;Then war and trade and clearest climePrecipitate the man of time,And forward stepped the perfect GreekTo fight, to carve, to paint, to speak.Will, wisdom, joy had found a tongueIn the charmed world when Homer sung.

  The other beginning runs thus:—I am the Muse,Memory's daughter,I stood by Jove at the first,—Take me out, and no world had been,Or chaos bare and bleak.If life has worth, I give it,And if all is taken, and I left,I make amends for all.Long I wroughtTo ripen and refineThe stagnant, craggy lumpTo a brainAnd shoot it throughWith electric wit.At last the snake and dragonShed their scales,And man was born.Then was Asia,Then was Nile,And at lastOn the sea-marge bleakForward stepped the perfect Greek;That will, wit, joy might find a tongue,And earth grow civil, Homer sung.Pleased, the planet hummed the tunes, etc.
• * 1.47

  Page 221, note 1. This phrase from the Vishnu Puranaoccurs in "Hamatreya."
• * 1.48

  Page 221, note 2. Mr. Emerson, writing to a friend in 1849, spoke with praise of the translation of the "Inferno" by Dr. John Carlyle, the brother of Thomas Carlyle:

  "I read it lately by night with wonder and joy at all its parts, and at none more than at the nerve and courage which is as essential to the poet as the soldier. Dante locked the door and put the key in his pocket. I believe we only value those who do so."

  In the verse-book here follow four lines:—

  Silence brooded in my heavenFor seven times seventy and seven,Prelude of the following songWell worth such strain to tarry long.
• * 1.49

  HYMN. Page 223. Mr. Emerson wrote this hymn, to be sung at the ordination of his successor, the Rev. Chandler Robbins, as pastor of the Second Church of Boston, in 1831. He justly preferred it to one which he had written before, which, though cast aside, has so much that is pleasing that it is now printed in the Appendix. The accepted version of the hymn was not in the May-Day volume, but was included by Mr. Emerson among the Selected Poems.
• * 1.50

  NATURE. II. Page 226. In one of the earlier verse-books the lines called "The Walk," printed in the Appendix, served for the second division of the poem, and there was a third, which Mr. Emerson took for the motto to "Fate," in Conduct of Life, beginning,—

  Delicate omens traced in airTo the lone bard true witness bare.
• * 1.51

  Page 226, note 1. The thought here expressed is found in the essay "Art," in Society and Solitude.
• * 1.52

  THE ROMANY GIRL. Page 227. This poem was one of the group contributed by Mr. Emerson to the opening number of the Atlantic Monthly, in November, 1857. It was written nearly three years earlier.

  The books of the Englishman George Borrow, who combined in a singular manner love of wild human nature and the missionary zeal of an agent of the Bible Society, were attractive to Mr. Emerson. They gave the motive for this poem, at first in the note-book called "Gypsy Song."
• * 1.53

  Page 227, note 1. I find in a journal this uncredited line,—

  Pâles filles du Nord! vous n'etes pas mes sœurs.
• * 1.54

  DAYS. Page 228. With regard to this poem, which Mr.Emerson once said he thought perhaps his best, the following remarkable entry is from the journal of 1852:—

  "I find one state of mind does not remember or conceive of another state. Thus I have written within a twelve month verses ('Days') which I do not remember the composition or correction of, and could not write the like to-day, and have only, for proof of their being mine, various external evidences, as the manuscripts in which I find them, and the circumstance that I have sent copies of them to friends, etc. Well, if they had been better, if it had been a noble poem, perhaps it would have only more entirely taken up the ladder into heaven."

  To the like purpose in the journal of the following year is this note, headed "The ivory gate":—

  "Poppy leaves are strewn when a generalization is made, for I can never remember the circumstances to which I owe it, so as to repeat the experiment or put myself in the conditions."

  But this image of the disguised divinities recurs again and again in his writings, as in the poem "May-Day," and twice in the "Lecture on the Times" (Nature, Addresses and Lectures, pp. 259, 287), and in "Works and Days" (Society and Solitude, p. 168). Dr. Holmes in the interesting chapter on Emerson's Poems, in his Memoir, quotes the latter passage and says:

  "Now see this thought in full dress, and then ask what is the difference between prose and poetry."

  He then gives the poem and adds,

  "Cinderella at the fireside, and Cinderella at the prince's ball!"

  "Days" was printed in the first number of the Atlantic.
• * 1.55

  MY GARDEN. Page 229. Of his Garden Mr. Emerson wrote to his friend Carlyle on May 14, 1846:—

  "I, too, have a new plaything, the best I ever had, — a wood-lot. Last Fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond; — a place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice a week at all seasons. My lot, to be sure, is on the farther side of the water, not so familiar to me as the nearer shore. Some of the wood is an old growth, but most of it has been cut off within twenty years and is growing thriftily. In these May days, when maples, poplars, oaks, birches, walnut and pine are in their spring glory, I go thither every afternoon, and cut with my hatchet an Indian path through the thicket all along the bold shore, and open the finest pictures.

  "My two little girls know the road now, though it is nearly two miles from my house, and find their way to the spring at the foot of a pine grove, and with some awe to the ruins of a village of shanties, all overgrown with mullein, which the Irish who built the railroad left behind them. At a good distance in from the shore the land rises to a rocky head, perhaps sixty feet above the water. Thereon I think to place a hut; perhaps it will have two stories and be a petty tower, looking out to Monadnoc and other New Hampshire Mountains. There I hope to go with book and pen when good hours come."

  "My Garden" is the hill, with a ledge of rock cropping out, these covered by a vigorous growth of oak, on the Lincoln side of Walden, opposite Mr. Emerson's loved pine grove where Thoreau lived for two years. Destructive fires of late years, set by passing railroad trains, have ruined the forest that clothed it.

  In his afternoon walks alone in the wood for many years, he strove to "put his woods in song," and to his children, when they went with him, he would often croon a few lines. The resulting verses gradually were separated, and those printed in the Appendix under the title "Walden" are mostly the earlier ones.

  "My Garden" was first printed in the Atlantic Monthlyfor December, 1866.
• * 1.56

  Page 229, note 1. The second verse in the manuscript, here omitted, was:—

  For joy and beauty planted it,With faerie gardens cheered,And boding Fancy haunted itWith men and women weird.
• * 1.57

  Page 230, note 1. The rising and failing of Walden's waters are curiously independent of dry or wet seasons. Its watershed is small; it is fed by springs at its bottom,—its clear water being more than one hundred feet in depth. It has no visible outlet, though it is evident that this must be by filtration through a ridge of sand and boulders one or two hundred yards thick, to a swamp, whence the waters run by the "Sanguinetto Brook," as Mr. Channing named it, to "Fairhaven Bay" on the Musketsquid or Concord River.
• * 1.58

  Page 230, note 2. This suggests some sentences on the last page of "Nature," in Essays, Second Series.
• * 1.59

  THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT. Page 232. This poem, also appearing in the Atlantic of November, 1857, was in the note-books called "Janus," but Mr. Emerson changed its name because the sad laborer, not the poet who can reconcile the two aspects, speaks. The title was more intelligible fifty years ago, when the Chartist agitation in England against privilege was recent.
• * 1.60

  THE TITMOUSE. Page 233. The chronicle of the poet's adventure with the titmouse was written in verse while it was still fresh in his mind.

  The poem appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1862, and here is the story in the journal: —

  March 3, 1862.

  "The snow still lies even with the tops of the walls across the Walden road, and, this afternoon, I waded through the woods to my grove. A chickadee came out to greet me, flew about within reach of my hands, perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, rested there two seconds, then up again just over my head, and busied himself on the dead bark. I whistled to him through my teeth, and (I think, in response) he began at once to whistle. I promised him crumbs, and must not go again to these woods without them. I suppose the best food to carry would be the meat of shagbarks or Castile nuts. Thoreau tells me that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, and will take crumbs from their hands."

  On the dangers of the situation, if such there were, Mr. Emerson is silent in the journal, as would be natural with him, and perhaps for Art's sake he magnifies them in the poem, but it is to be remembered how like a lion March often comes in in Massachusetts, that the snow was deep, the woods really remote and the walker approaching his sixtieth year. The American reader will hardly find the poem so obscure as did Matthew Arnold, who said that, after all, one doesn't quite get at what the titmouse really did for Emerson.

  The titmouse was an old friend. Here is a passage from the journal of 1856: —

  "The horse taught me something, the titmouse whispered a secret in my ear, and the lespedeza looked at me, as I passed. Will the academicians, in their Annual Report, please tell me what. they said?"
• * 1.61

  THE HARP. Page 237. "The Harp" formed a part of "May-Day" when that poem first appeared. It followed the passage which tells of the harmonizing by the air of discordant natural sounds at Lake Superior.

  The wild wind-harp of the pine, or the artificial one in his study-window played on by the West-wind, gave the music that stirred Emerson.
• * 1.62

  Page 239, note 1. The story, from the Morte d'Arthur, of Merlin hopelessly confined in a chamber of air, from which he speaks to the passing knights, is given in full in "Poetry and Imagination," in Letters and Social Aims.
• * 1.63

  Page 240, note 1. Journal, 1861.

  "What a joy I foundand still can find in the Æolian harp; what a youth find I still in Collins's, Ode to Evening' and in Gray's 'Eton College'! What delight I owed to Moore's insignificant but melodious poetry! That is the merit of Clough's 'Bothie' that the joy of youth is in it!"
• * 1.64

  Page 241, note 1. In a lecture on Italy, which Mr. Emerson gave on his return in 1834, he said:—

  "On Ash Wednesday the famous Miserere was sung before the Pope and the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. The saying at Rome is that the effect of the piece as performed in the Sistine Chapel cannot be imitated, not only by any other choir, but in any other chapel in the world.... Of its merits I am quite unable to speak who know nothing of psalmody. And yet even to me it was sweet music and sounded more like an Æolian harp than anything else."
• * 1.65

  SEASHORE. Page 242. In July, 1857, Mr. Emerson, induced by Dr. Bartol, took his family to spend two weeks at Pigeon Cove, on Cape Ann. The day after our return to Concord, he came into our mother's room, where we were all sitting, with his journal in his hand, and said,

  "I came in yesterday from walking on the rocks and wrote down what the sea had said to me; and to-day, when I open my book, I find it all reads as blank verse, with scarcely a change."

  Here is the passage from that journal, as he read it to us: July 23.

  "Returned from Pigeon Cove, where we have made acquaintance with the sea, for seven days. 'T is a noble, friendly power, and seemed to say to me, Why so late and slow to come to me? Am I not here always, thy proper summer home? Is not my voice thy needful music; my breath thy healthful climate in the heats; my touch thy cure? Was ever building like my terraces? Was ever couch so magnificent as mine? Lie down on my warm ledges and learn that a very little hut is all you need. I have made this architecture superfluous, and it is paltry beside mine. Here are twenty Romes and Ninevehs and Karnacs in ruins together, obelisk and pyramid and Giant's Causeway; here they all are prostrate or half piled. And behold the sea, the opaline, plentiful and strong, yet beautiful as the rose or the rainbow, full of food, nourisher of men, purger of the world, creating a sweet climate and in its unchangeable ebb and flow, and in its beauty at a few furlongs, giving a hint of that which changes not, and is perfect."
• * 1.66

  SONG OF NATURE. Page 244. This joyful and eminently characteristic poem seems to have been written by Mr. Emerson in 1859. His belief in the sure advance of life through the ages he had expressed long before, but now, though his belief needed no confirmation, the new and interesting lights on the subject and examples everywhere adduced by Darwin and his followers were inspiring to him, and here found expression.
• * 1.67

  Page 244, note 1. There are in the manuscript varying expressions in the foregoing poem which are interesting.

  In the first,

  "the gulf of space"

  originally was

  "the swallowing space."

  In the second, the last line ran, In death new-born and strong.

  In the fifth verse, Mr. Emerson hesitated long, as the various trials show, before he changed his line,

  My apples ripened well,

  by substituting "gardens" for the more lively image.
• * 1.68

  Page 246, note 1. Readers who wish nothing unsolved are much troubled by this verse, but Nature is not statistical or immediately intelligible. Like the gods she

  "says all things by indirection."

  When the young knight was angered by Merlin's vagueness, Tennyson makes the wise man answer, —

  "Know ye not, then, the fiddling of the Bards?Confusion, and illusion, and relation,Elusion, and occasion, and evasion."

  Nor can the editor say with authority who was meant in the third line of the next verse. Its very ambiguity was probably intentional and makes it harmonize better with the preceding verse. If it points to Egypt, some readers have suggested Moses, but Mr. Emerson would have been far more likely to refer to one of the great Alexandrian Neo-platonists.

  But Italy is more strictly

  Over against the mouths of Nile,

  and thus the genius of classic Rome or of the Italian Renaissance, without choosing a representative, might have been indicated. Ira choice must be made, the "Solution" would point to Dante. It seems remarkable that in that poem Plato,

  "the purple ancient... of the richest strain,"

  Past and PresentDialNatural History of Intellect is not named, for the author owed far more to him than to Swedenborg.
• * 1.69

  Page 247, note 1. In the note-book, "Forces," 1863, is this entry:—

  The sun has lost no beams,The earth no virtues,Gravity is as adhesive,Electricity as swift, heat as expansive, light as joyful,Air as virtuous, water as medicinal, as in the beginning.And the magazine of thought and the heart of moralsAre as rich and omnipotent as at the first day.
• * 1.70

  TWO RIVERS. Page 248. This, perhaps the most musical of the poems, gives opportunity to show Mr. Emerson's later method. The thought came on the river-bank, whispered by the ripples, and very likely was written there; if not, on his return to his study. It mainly gave the form, for

  "verse must be alive and inseparable from its contents."

  Thereafter, when the days came, as Herrick said,

  "That I Fitted am to prophesy,"

  he repeated or chanted the lines to himself until the right word was in an instant given to replace the awkward phrase with redundant syllables, and the polish and the music came to match the thought. Here is the poem on the day of its birth, in the early summer of 1856:—

  "Thy voice is sweet, Musketaquid, and repeats the music of the rain, but sweeter is the silent stream which flows even through thee, as thou through the land.

  "Thou art shut in thy banks, but the stream I love flows in thy water, and flows through rocks and through the air and through rays of light as well, and through darkness, and through men and women.

  "I hear and see the inundation and the eternal spending of the stream in winter and in summer, in men and animals, in passion and thought. Happy are they who can hear it."

  I see thy brimming, eddying streamAnd thy enchantment,For thou changest every rock in thy bedInto a gem,All is opal and agate,And at will thou pavest with diamonds:Take them away from the streamAnd they are poor, shreds and flints.So is it with me to-day.

  This rhapsody does not gain by the attempt to reduce part of it to rhyme, which occurs later in the same journal:—

  Thy murmuring voice, Musketaquid,Repeats the music of the rain,But sweeter rivers silent flitThrough thee as thou through Concord plain.Thou in thy banks must dwell,ButThe stream I follow freely flowsThrough thee, through rocks, through air as well,Through light, through men it gayly goes.

  But Mr. Emerson kept the verses by him nearly two years before, in their perfected form, he gave them to the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1858.
• * 1.71

  Page 248, note 1. From the first, the image of the stream applied to thought and life appears in the prose and the poems, as in the "Over-Soul" (p. 268), in the first series of Essays, in "Nature" (pp. 178, 179 ), in the second series, and in Nature, Addresses and Lectures (pp. 26, 27). In the poem "Peter's Field," in the Appendix, the poet says,—

  Far seen, the river glides below,Tossing one sparkle to the eyes.I catch thy meaning, wizard wave;The River of my Life replies.
• * 1.72

  Page 248, note 2. The words of Jesus when he talked with the Samaritan woman at the fountain, were, of course, in the author's mind.
• * 1.73

  WALDEINSAMKEIT. Page 249. Possibly the decision to use for Forest Solitude an equivalent, outlandish in the strict and respectful sense, may have been influenced by the fact that to woods in the region of Walden more than to others, Mr. Emerson went for communion with Nature, and the German word had a kindred sound. And yet the first two lines tell the story that the poem was begun during a visit to Mr. John M. Forbes at the beautiful island of Naushon, in the summer of 1857. The poem was published in the Atlantic Monthly for October of the following year.
• * 1.74

  Page 249, note 1.

  "Allah does not count the days spentin the chase"

  was a favorite quotation, but the sea always suggested to Emerson illimitable time. Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson relates that when she was a fellow guest with Mr. Emerson at the house of a friend in Newport, he quietly asked,

  "Are there any clocks in Newport?"

  and the meaning did not instantly occur to the hearers.
• * 1.75

  Page 249, note 2. Journal, 1845. "The wood is soberness with a basis of joy." Immediately under this is written, Sober with a fund of joy.
• * 1.76

  TERMINUS. Page 251. Terminus was to the Romans the deity presiding over boundaries and landmarks.

  In the last days of the year 1866, when I was returning from a long stay in the Western States, I met my father in New York just starting for his usual winter lecturing trip, in those days extending beyond the Mississippi. We spent the night together at the St. Denis Hotel, and as we sat by the fire he read me two or three of his poems for the new May-Day volume, among them "Terminus." It almost startled me. No thought of his ageing had ever come to me, and there he sat, with no apparent abatement of bodily vigor, and young in spirit, recognizing with serene acquiescence his failing forces; I think he smiled as he read. He recognized, as none of us did, that his working days were nearly done. They lasted about five years longer, although he lived, in comfortable health, yet ten years beyond those of his activity. Almost at the time when he wrote "Terminus" he wrote in his journal: —

  "Within I do not find Wrinkles and used heart, but unspent youth."
• * 1.77

  Page 252, note 1. Mr. Emerson wrote to his brother William in 1838,—

  "All Emersons are slender. There are only two or three sound stocks of that excellent tree."

  Journal, 1859.

  "Shall I blame my mother, whitest of women, because she was not a gypsy and gave me no swarthy ferocity? Or my father because he came of a lettered race and had no porter's shoulders?"
• * 1.78

  Page 252, note 2. There are in the verse-book lines in the last stanza which Mr. Emerson omitted in the poem. One pair, containing the nautical image, follows the line in the text, —

  Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime,

  with

  'Is the sky dark?' it saith, 'More near will standThe pilot with unerring hand.'

  Another pair drop this image, for home surroundings, thus:—

  Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime,And hide myself among my thrifty pears,Each fault of mine masked by a growth of theirs.
• * 1.79

  THE NUN'S ASPIRATION. Page 253. This poem is but ametrical rendering of some fine and some touching passages from the journal of Miss Mary Moody Emerson, the sister of Mr. Emerson's father. She was a person of great devoutness, the inspirer, the spur and the constant critic of her nephews, whom she loved and secretly admired. Mr. Emerson gives an account of her remarkable life in the volume Lectures and Biographical Sketches. In Mr. Cabot's Memoir of Emerson are many extracts from the letters that passed between her and her nephews.
• * 1.80

  Page 254, note 1. In spite of Miss Emerson's temperamental eccentricities, of which she was aware, and alluded to them in her journal, she was loved by her nephews, and of her Mr. Emerson said:

  "She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood; a blessing which nothing else in education could supply."
• * 1.81

  APRIL. Page 255. These verses first appeared among the Selected Poems which Mr. Emerson published in 1876. A pleasant little description of the bewitching influences of April, in a letter written to Margaret Fuller in 1840, was transcribed by him into a note-book and perhaps was the foundation of the poem.
• * 1.82

  MAIDEN SPEECH OF THE ÆOLIAN HARP. Page 256. These lines accompanied Mr. Emerson's New Year's present to his daughter Edith and her husband, Colonel William H. Forbes, in 1868.
• * 1.83

  Page 256, note 1. His own delighted use of the windharp is shown in this fragment of an early lecture:—

  "Stretch a few threads over an Æolian harp and put it in the window, and listen to what it says of the times, and of the heart of Nature. You shall not believe that the miracle of Nature is less, the chemical power worn out."
• * 1.84

  CUPIDO. Page 257. This, as well as the three poems which precede it, was first published in Selected Poems. It seems to have been written in 1843.
• * 1.85

  THE PAST. Page 257. No trace of the history of this poem remains.
• * 1.86

  Page 258, note 1. In the first pages of the essay on Memory, in Natural History of Intellect, it is said of remorseful recollection of the Past:—

  "Well, that is as it should be. That is the police of the Universe: the angels are set to punish you, so long as you are capable of such crime. But... the day comes when you are incapable of such crime. Then you suffer no more, you look on it as heaven looks on it, with wonder at the deed, and with applause at the pain it has cost you."
• * 1.87

  THE LAST FAREWELL. Page 258. Mr. Emerson printed his brother Edward's sad farewell to all that was dear to him,

  six years after his death, in the first number of the Dial.
• * 1.88

  Page 258, note 2. Edward was born in 1805, but though two years younger than Waldo, the latter used to say that they were really very near together, as he was near the foot of his classes, and Edward at the head of his. Those who remembered him said that he was strikingly handsome, a born scholar, more brilliant in his studies and his speech than Waldo, and a favorite in society. All through college he was easily first scholar. Though of delicate constitution, his conscience and his ambition would not allow him to spare himself. Daniel Webster, in whose office he studied law, recognized his powers and his fine character, and committed to him the charge of his two sons. Yet Edward heaped other tasks upon himself, to free himself from debt incurred in the voyage to Europe for his health, until his reason for a time gave way under the strain. This he soon regained, but his mainspring seemed broken. Advised to go to a milder climate, he took a clerkship in a business house in Porto Rico, and worked uncomplainingly there for a few years. Friends who saw his cheerful demeanor reported that he was in the way of recovery of his vigor, but it appears that he himself knew that, as he wrote,

  "the arrow of the angel had gone too deep."

  A verse telling of a private grief, which Mr. Emerson omitted, may now be restored.
• * 1.89

  IN MEMORIAM, E. B. E. Page 261, note 1. The Old North Bridge, across which the opening volleys of the Revolutionary War were fired in a battle whose field extended from the Musketsquid to the Charles River, was close behind the Manse built by Rev. William Emerson, the young patriot minister of Concord, and there his grandsons William, Ralph Waldo, Edward and Charles had spent many pleasant days in boyhood. (See the poems "Dirge" and "Peter's Field." ) The two British soldiers killed at the first fire lie buried where they fell.
• * 1.90

  Page 264, note 1. The expression in this line is borrowed from Milton and used by Mr. Emerson more than once in his writings.