Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

III

ELEMENTS AND MOTTOES * 1.1

EXPERIENCE

THE lords of life, the lords of life,— I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim,— Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name;— Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look. Him by the hand dear Nature took, Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered,' Darling, never mind! To-morrow they will wear another face, The founder thou; these are thy race!'

COMPENSATION

THE wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep Trembling balance duly keep. In changing moon and tidal wave Glows the feud of Want and Have. Gauge of more and less through space, Electric star or pencil plays, The lonely Earth amid the balls That hurry through the eternal halls, A makeweight flying to the void, Supplemental asteroid, Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark.

Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine; Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm; Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, And power to him who power exerts. Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet;

And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim the sea, And, like tht shadow, follow thee. * 1.2

POLITICS

GOLD and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust,— Walls Amphion piled Phœbus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from the heat,

Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat,— When the Church is social worth, When the state-house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home.

HEROISM

RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread, Lightning-knotted round his head; The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails. * 1.3

CHARACTER

THE sun set, but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye; And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of time. * 1.4 He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again: His action won such reverence sweet As hid all measure of the feat.

CULTURE

CAN rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky, And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye: But, to his native centre fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. * 1.5

FRIENDSHIP

A RUDDY drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays. I fancied he was fled,— And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness, Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair. * 1.6

SPIRITUAL LAWS

THE living Heaven thy prayers respect, House at once and architect, Quarrying man's rejected hours, Builds therewith eternal towers; Sole and self-commanded works, Fears not undermining days, Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks In reaction and recoil, Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil; Forging, through swart arms of Offence, The silver seat of Innocence. * 1.7

BEAUTY

WAS never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone, But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere, In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. He smote the lake to feed his eye

With the beryl beam of the broken wave; He flung in pebbles well to hear The moment's music which they gave. Oft pealed for him a lofty tone From nodding pole and belting zone. He heard a voice none else could hear From centred and from errant sphere. The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. In dens of passion, and pits of woes He saw strong Eros struggling through, To sun the dark and solve the curse, And beam to the bounds of the universe. While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, How spread their lures for him in vain Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread. * 1.8

MANNERS

GRACE, Beauty and Caprice Build this golden portal; Graceful women, chosen men, Dazzle every mortal. Their sweet and lofty countenance

His enchanted food; He need not go to them, their forms Beset his solitude. He looketh seldom in their face, His eyes explore the ground,— The green grass is a looking-glass Whereon their traits are found. * 1.9 Little and less he says to them, So dances his heart in his breast; Their tranquil mien bereaveth him Of wit, of words, of rest. Too weak to win, too fond to shun The tyrants of his doom, The much deceived Endymion Slips behind a tomb. * 1.10

ART

GIVE to barrows, trays and pans Grace and glimmer of romance; Bring the moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city's paved street Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet; Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square; Let statue, picture, park and hall,

Ballad, flag and festival, The past restore, the day adorn, And make to-morrow a new morn. So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables, His children fed at heavenly tables. 'T is the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate, And, moulded of one element With the days and firmament, Teach him on these as stairs to climb, And live on even terms with Time; Whilst upper life the slender rill Of human sense doth overfill.

UNITY * 1.11

SPACE iS ample, east and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day were tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its will on age and hour.

WORSHIP

THIS is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: He to captivity was sold, But him no prison-bars would hold: Though they sealed him in a rock, Mountain chains he can unlock: Thrown to lions for their meat, The crouching lion kissed his feet;

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, But arched o'er him an honoring vault. This is he men miscall Fate, Threading dark ways, arriving late, But ever coming in time to crown The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down. * 1.12 He is the oldest, and best known, More near than aught thou call'st thy own, Yet, greeted in another's eyes, Disconcerts with glad surprise. * 1.13 This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, Floods with blessings unawares. Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.

PRUDENCE

THEME no poet gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to young; Scorn not thou the love of parts, And the articles of arts. Grandeur of the perfect sphere Thanks the atoms that cohere.

NATURE

I

A SUBTLE chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings; The eye reads omens where it goes, And speaks all languages the rose; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

II

The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin; Self-kindled every atom glows And hints the future which it owes.

THE INFORMING SPIRIT

I

THERE iS no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.

II

I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Cæsar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.

CIRCLES

NATURE centres into bails, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside, Scan the profile of the sphere; Knew they what that signified, A new genesis were here.

INTELLECT

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals;— The sower scatters broad his seed; The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

GIFTS

GIFTS of one who loved me,— 'T was high time they came; When he ceased to love me, Time they stopped for shame.

PROMISE

IN countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; In thousand far-transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives; So, in the new-born millions, The perfect Adam lives.

Not less are summer mornings dear To every child they wake, And each with novel life his sphere Fills for his proper sake.

CARITAS

IN the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down Doubling daylight everywhere: Peace now each for malice takes, Beauty for his sinful weeds, For the angel Hope aye makes Him an angel whom she leads.

POWER

HIS tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill; His face was the mould of beauty, And his heart the throne of will.

WEALTH

WHO shall tell what did befall, Far away in time, when once, Over the lifeless ball, Hung idle stars and suns? What god the element obeyed? Wings of what wind the lichen bore, Wafting the puny seeds of power, Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? And well the primal pioneer Knew the strong task to it assigned, Patient through Heaven's enormous year To build in matter home for mind. From air the creeping centuries drew The matted thicket low and wide, This must the leaves of ages strew The granite slab to clothe and hide, Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled (In dizzy æons dim and mute The reeling brain can ill compute) Copper and iron, lead and gold? What oldest star the fame can save Of races perishing to pave The planet with a floor of lime?

Dust is their pyramid and mole: Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed Under the tumbling mountain's breast, In the safe herbal of the coal? But when the quarried means were piled, All is waste and worthless, till Arrives the wise selecting will, And, out of slime and chaos, Wit Draws the threads of fair and fit. Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, The shop of toil, the hall of arts; Then flew the sail across the seas To feed the North from tropic trees; The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, Where they were bid, the rivers ran; New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. Then docks were built, and crops were stored, And ingots added to the hoard. But though light-headed man forget, Remembering Matter pays her debt: Still, through her motes and masses, draw Electric thrills and ties of law, Which bind the strengths of Nature wild To the conscience of a child.

ILLUSIONS

FLOW, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation; No anchorage is. Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die live. House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, Old man and young maid, Day's toil and its guerdon, They are all vanishing, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored. See the stars through them, Through treacherous marbles. Know the stars yonder, The stars everlasting, Are fugitive also, And emulate, vaulted, The lambent heat lightning And fire-fly's flight.

When thou dost return On the wave's circulation,

Behold the shimmer, The wild dissipation, And, out of endeavor To change and to flow, The gas become solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,— Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to power, And to endurance.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Page 267. The thirteen poems which follow, beginning with "Experience," were selected by Mr. Emerson from the mottoes of the Essays, of which they—all but two— bear the names, for publication in May-Day and Other Piecesin 1867. He there called the group "Elements." The motto of the essay on Behavior he called "Manners," the essay of that name having no original motto, but one from Ben Jonson. To the motto of "The Over-Soul" he gave the title "Unity."

  It has seemed to the editor that the readers of the Poems would be glad to have the other mottoes which Mr. Emerson gave to his chapters included in this volume. They therefore are printed, with a few exceptions, after the thirteen which the author preferred. The exceptions are as follows: the motto of Self-Reliance is found where Mr. Emerson placed it among the Quatrains as "Power;" the motto to "The Poet," with the exception of its first two lines, is a part of the long poem of that name in the Appendix; most of the lines of " Fate" belong among the fragments on" The Poet," in the Appendix, and the last four lines form the ending of the poem "Fate;" the motto to "Considerations by the Way" seemed better placed with the "Song of Merlin." The second motto of" Character" and that of "Beauty" are portions respectively of the "Ode to Beauty" and of "In Memoriam, E. B.E." The titles "Promise" and "Caritas" seemed appropriate to the mottoes respectively of "Nominalist and Realist" and "New England Reformers." "Love" had only a verse from the Koran as motto. The Essays in the volumes which followed Conduct of Life had no mottoes in Mr. Emerson's lifetime, and, with Mr. Cabot's sanction, I supplied these for Lectures and Biographical Sketches, in the Riverside Edition, from fragments of verse, never published by Mr. Emerson, which were printed in the Appendix. I have now ventured to do the same for Society and Solitude and Letters and Social Aims.
• * 1.2

  Page 271, note 1. Journal, 1840.

  "I read to-day in Ockley [History of the Saracens] a noble sentence of Ali, son-in-law of Mahomet: 'Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.'"

  See also "The Over-Soul" ( Essays, First Series, p. 293).
• * 1.3

  Page 272, note 1. Compare the quatrain "Northman."
• * 1.4

  Page 273, note 1. The first six lines of this motto are from "The Poet" (see Appendix).
• * 1.5

  Page 273, note 2. This poem in the verse-book begins,—

  Ah me! can maxims educate.

  There is in "Fate" ( Conduct of Life, p. 44) a passage on the necessity for the great to be impressionable.
• * 1.6

  Page 274, note 1. In the notes to "Friendship," Essays, First Series, p. 412, are two passages on ideal friendship from letters by Mr. Emerson.
• * 1.7

  Page 275, note 1. This poem sheds light on "Uriel" and on "Brahma." The essay on Circles, especially pages 317— 318, contains much to the same purpose,—the beneficent compensations in Morals, as in Nature. Had Mr. Emerson ever resorted to italics, the use of them in the word "living" would have helped the reader in the first line, which is condensed to the last point. Thy prayers are concerned with a Heaven which is alive, is the meaning. This is shown in the first rhapsody in the verse-book:—

  Heaven is alive;Self-built and quarrying itself,Upbuilds eternal towers;Self-commanded worksIn vital cirqueBy dint of being all;Its loss is transmutation.Fears not the craft of undermining days,Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that's lodgedIn reaction and recoil,Makes flames to freeze and ice to boil,And thro' the arms of all the fiendsBuilds the firm seat of Innocence.
• * 1.8

  Page 276, note 1. Mr. Emerson's note-books are full of verses about the joyful Seyd (or Said) seeking beauty in Nature and man. These may be found in the Appendix, in "Fragments on the Poet." A few of these were taken by him for this motto.
• * 1.9

  Page 277, note 1. In "Love," Essays, First Series, pp.176, 177, is a passage which these lines recall.
• * 1.10

  Page 277, note 2. In a letter to a near friend, written in 1841, Mr. Emerson speaks of himself as

  "an admirer of persons. I cannot get used to them; they daunt and dazzle me still.... Blessed be the Eternal Power for those whom fancy even cannot strip of beauty, and who never for a moment seem to me profane."

  Letters to a Friend
• * 1.11

  Page 279, note 1. Mr. Emerson thus changed the title of the motto of "The Over-Soul."
• * 1.12

  Page 280, note 1. See "Fate" (p. 21 in Essays, First Series) and also the poems "Nemesis" and "Voluntaries."
• * 1.13

  Page 280, note 2. Compare the passage in the Address to the Divinity Students ( Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p.121).