Poems / Ralph Waldo Emerson [electronic text]

V

APPENDIX

THE POET * 1.1

I

RIGHT upward on the road of fame With sounding steps the poet came; Born and nourished in miracles, His feet were shod with golden bells, Or where he stepped the soil did peal As if the dust were glass and steel. The gallant child where'er he came Threw to each fact a tuneful name. The things whereon he cast his eyes Could not the nations rebaptize, Nor Time's snows hide the names he set, Nor last posterity forget. * 1.2 Yet every scroll whereon he wrote In latent fire his secret thought, Fell unregarded to the ground, Unseen by such as stood around. The pious wind took it away, The reverent darkness hid the lay. * 1.3 Methought like water-haunting birds Divers or dippers were his words, And idle clowns beside the mere At the new vision gape and jeer.

But when the noisy scorn was past, Emerge the wingèd words in haste. New-bathed, new-trimmed, on healthy wing, Right to the heaven they steer and sing.

A Brother of the world, his song Sounded like a tempest strong Which tore from oaks their branches broad, And stars from the ecliptic road. Times wore he as his clothing-weeds, He sowed the sun and moon for seeds. * 1.4 As melts the iceberg in the seas, As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze, As snow-banks thaw in April's beam, The solid kingdoms like a dream Resist in vain his motive strain, They totter now and float amain. * 1.5 For the Muse gave special charge His learning should be deep and large, And his training should not scant The deepest lore of wealth or want: His flesh should feel, his eyes should read Every maxim of dreadful Need; * 1.6 In its fulness he should taste Life's honeycomb, but not too fast; Full fed, but not intoxicated; He should be loved; he should be hated; A blooming child to children dear, His heart should palpitate with fear.

And well he loved to quit his home And, Calmuck, in his wagon roam To read new landscapes and old skies; * 1.7— But oh, to see his solar eyes Like meteors which chose their way And rived the dark like a new day! Not lazy grazing on all they saw, Each chimney-pot and cottage door, Farm-gear and village picket-fence, But, feeding on magnificence, They bounded to the horizon's edge And searched with the sun's privilege. Landward they reached the mountains old Where pastoral tribes their flocks infold, Saw rivers run seaward by cities high And the seas wash the low-hung sky; Saw the endless rack of the firmament And the sailing moon where the cloud was rent, And through man and woman and sea and star Saw the dance of Nature forward and far, Through worlds and races and terms and times Saw musical order and pairing rhymes. * 1.8

II

The gods talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine, And fill the long reach of the old seashore With dialogue divine;

And the poet who overhears Some random word they say Is the fated man of men Whom the ages must obey: One who having nectar drank Into blissful orgies sank; He takes no mark of night or day, He cannot go, he cannot stay, He would, yet would not, counsel keep, But, like a walker in his sleep With staring eye that seeth none, Ridiculously up and down Seeks how he may fitly tell The heart-o'erlading miracle. * 1.9

Not yet, not yet, Impatient friend,— A little while attend; Not yet I sing: but I must wait, My hand upon the silent string, Fully until the end. I see the coming light, I see the scattered gleams, Aloft, beneath, on left and right The stars' own ether beams; These are but seeds of days, Not yet a steadfast morn, An intermittent blaze, An embryo god unborn.

How all things sparkle, The dust is alive, * 1.10 To the birth they arrive: I snuff the breath of my morning afar, I see the pale lustres condense to a star: The fading colors fix, The vanishing are seen, And the world that shall be Twins the world that has been. I know the appointed hour, I greet my office well, Never faster, never slower Revolves the fatal wheel! The Fairest enchants me, The Mighty commands me, Saying,' Stand in thy place; Up and eastward turn thy face; As mountains for the morning wait, Coming early, coming late, So thou attend the enriching Fate Which none can stay, and none accelerate.' I am neither faint nor weary, Fill thy will, O faultless heart! Here from youth to age I tarry,— Count it flight of bird or dart. My heart at the heart of things Heeds no longer lapse of time, Rushing ages moult their wings, Bathing in thy day sublime.

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. * 1.11

Beside his hut and shading oak, Thus to himself the poet spoke, I have supped to-night with gods, I will not go under a wooden roof: As I walked among the hills In the love which Nature fills, The great stars did not shine aloof, They hurried down from their deep abodes And hemmed me in their glittering troop. * 1.12

'Divine Inviters! I accept The courtesy ye have shown and kept From ancient ages for the bard, To modulate With finer fate A fortune harsh and hard. With aim like yours I watch your course, Who never break your lawful dance By error or intemperance. O birds of ether without wings! O heavenly ships without a sail!

O fire of fire! O best of things! O mariners who never fail! Sail swiftly through your amber vault, An animated law, a presence to exalt.' * 1.13

Ah, happy if a sun or star Could chain the wheel of Fortune's car, And give to hold an even state, Neither dejected nor elate, That haply man upraised might keep The height of Fancy's far-eyed steep. In vain: the stars are glowing wheels, Giddy with motion Nature reels, Sun, moon, man, undulate and stream, The mountains flow, the solids seem, * 1.14 Change acts, reacts; back, forward hurled, And pause were palsy to the world.— The morn is come: the starry crowds Are hid behind the thrice-piled clouds; The new day lowers, and equal odds Have changed not less the guest of gods; Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn, The child of genius sits forlorn: Between two sleeps a short day's stealth, 'Mid many ails a brittle health, A cripple of God, half true, half formed, And by great sparks Promethean warmed, Constrained by impotence to adjourn To infinite time his eager turn,

His lot of action at the urn. He by false usage pinned about No breath therein, no passage out, Cast wishful glances at the stars And wishful saw the Ocean stream:— 'Merge me in the brute universe, Or lift to a diviner dream!' * 1.15

Beside him sat enduring love, Upon him noble eyes did rest, Which, for the Genius that there strove, The follies bore that it invest. They spoke not, for their earnest sense Outran the craft of eloquence. * 1.16

He whom God had thus preferred,— To whom sweet angels ministered, Saluted him each morn as brother, And bragged his virtues to each other,— Alas! how were they so beguiled, And they so pure? He, foolish child, A facile, reckless, wandering will, Eager for good, not hating ill, Thanked Nature for each stroke she dealt; On his tense chords all strokes were felt, The good, the bad with equal zeal, He asked, he only asked, to feel. Timid, self-pleasing, sensitive, With Gods, with fools, content to live;

Bended to fops who bent to him; Surface with surfaces did swim.

'Sorrow, sorrow!' the angels cried, 'Is this dear Nature's manly pride? Call hither thy mortal enemy, Make him glad thy fall to see! Yon waterflag, yon sighing osier, A drop can shake, a breath can fan; Maidens laugh and weep; Composure Is the pudency of man.' * 1.17

Again by night the poet went From the lighted halls Beneath the darkling firmament To the seashore, to the old seawalls, Out shone a star beneath the cloud, The constellation glittered soon,— 'You have no lapse; so have ye glowed But once in your dominion. And yet, dear stars, I know ye shine Only by needs and loves of mine; Light-loving, light-asking life in me Feeds those eternal lamps I see. * 1.18 And I to whom your light has spoken, I, pining to be one of you, I fall, my faith is broken, Ye scorn me from your deeps of blue.

Or if perchance, ye orbs of Fate, Your ne'er averted glance Beams with a will compassionate On sons of time and chance, Then clothe these hands with power In just proportion, Nor plant immense designs Where equal means are none.'

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

Means, dear brother, ask them not; Soul's desire is means enow, Pure content is angel's lot, Thine own theatre art thou.

Gentler far than falls the snow In the woodwalks still and low Fell the lesson on his heart And woke the fear lest angels part.

POET

I see your forms with deep content, I know that ye are excellent, But will ye stay? I hear the rustle of wings, Ye mediate what to say Ere ye go to quit me for ever and aye.

SPIRITS

Brother, we are no phantom band; Brother, accept this fatal hand. Aches thine unbelieving heart With the fear that we must part? See, all we are rooted here By one thought to one same sphere; From thyself thou canst not flee,— From thyself no more can we. * 1.19

POET

Suns and stars their courses keep, But not angels of the deep: Day and night their turn observe, But the day of day may swerve. Is there warrant that the waves Of thought in their mysterious caves Will heap in me their highest tide, In me therewith beatified? Unsure the ebb and flood of thought, The moon comes back,—the Spirit not.

SPIRITS

Brother, sweeter is the Law Than all the grace Love ever saw; We are its suppliants. By it, we Draw the breath of Eternity;

Serve thou it not for daily bread,— Serve it for pain and fear and need. Love it, though it hide its light; By love behold the sun at night. If the Law Should thee forget, More enamoured serve it yet; Though it hate thee, suffer long; Put the Spirit in the wrong; * 1.20 Brother, no decrepitude Chills the limbs of Time; As fleet his feet, his hands as good, His vision as sublime: On Nature's wheels there is no rust; Nor less on man's enchanted dust Beauty and Force alight.

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT * 1.21

I

THERE are beggars in Iran and Araby, SAID was hungrier than all; Hafiz said he was a fly That came to every festival. He came a pilgrim to the Mosque On trail of camel and caravan, Knew every temple and kiosk Out from Mecca to Ispahan;

Northward he went to the snowy hills, At court he sat in the grave Divan. His music was the south-wind's sigh, His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye, And ever the spell of beauty came And turned the drowsy world to flame. By lake and stream and gleaming hall And modest copse and the forest tall, Where'er he went, the magic guide Kept its place by the poet's side. Said melted the days like cups of pearl, Served high and low, the lord and the churl, Loved harebells nodding on a rock, A cabin hung with curling smoke, Ring of axe or hum of wheel Or gleam which use can paint on steel, And huts and tents; nor loved he less Stately lords in palaces, Princely women hard to please, Fenced by form and ceremony, Decked by courtly rites and dress And etiquette of gentilesse. But when the mate of the snow and wind, He left each civil scale behind: Him wood-gods fed with honey wild And of his memory beguiled. He loved to watch and wake When the wing of the south-wind whipt the lake And the glassy surface in ripples brake

And fled in pretty frowns away Like the flitting boreal lights, Rippling roses in northern nights, Or like the thrill of Æolian strings In which the sudden wind-god rings. * 1.22 In caves and hollow trees he crept And near the wolf and panther slept. He came to the green ocean's brim And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim, Summer and winter, o'er the wave, Like creatures of a skiey mould, Impassible to heat or cold. He stood before the tumbling main With joy too tense for sober brain; He shared the life of the element, The tie of blood and home was rent: As if in him the welkin walked, The winds took flesh, the mountains talked, And he the bard, a crystal soul Sphered and concentric with the whole.

II

The Dervish whined to Said, "Thou didst not tarry while I prayed. Beware the fire that Eblis burned." But Saadi coldly thus returned, "Once with manlike love and fear I gave thee for an hour my ear, I kept the sun and stars at bay,

And love, for words thy tongue could say. I cannot sell my heaven again For all that rattles in thy brain." * 1.23

III

Said Saadi, "When I stood before Hassan the camel-driver's door, I scorned the fame of Timour brave; Timour, to Hassan, was a slave. In every glance of Hassan's eye I read great years of victory, And I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides, Worship Toil's wisdom that abides. I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's, I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance." * 1.24

IV

The civil world will much forgive To bards who from its maxims live, But if, grown bold, the poet dare Bend his practice to his prayer And following his mighty heart Shame the times and live apart,— Væ solis! I found this, That of goods I could not miss If I fell within the line, Once a member, all was mine,

Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains, Fortune's delectable mountains; But if I would walk alone, Was neither cloak nor crumb my own. And thus the high Muse treated me, Directly never greeted me, But when she spread her dearest spells, Feigned to speak to some one else. I was free to overhear, Or I might at will forbear; Yet mark me well, that idle word Thus at random overheard Was the symphony of spheres, And proverb of a thousand years, The light wherewith all planets shone, The livery all events put on, It fell in rain, it grew in grain, It put on flesh in friendly form, Frowned in my foe and growled in storm, It spoke in Tullius Cicero, In Milton and in Angelo: I travelled and found it at Rome; Eastward it filled all Heathendom And it lay on my hearth when I came home. * 1.25

V

Mask thy wisdom with delight, Toy with the bow, yet hit the white,

As Jelaleddin old and gray; He seemed to bask, to dream and play Without remoter hope or fear Than still to entertain his ear And pass the burning summer-time In the palm-grove with a rhyme; Heedless that each cunning word Tribes and ages overheard: Those idle catches told the laws Holding Nature to her cause.

God only knew how Saadi dined; Roses he ate, and drank the wind; He freelier breathed beside the pine, In cities he was low and mean; The mountain waters washed him clean And by the sea-waves he was strong; He heard their medicinal song, Asked no physician but the wave, No palace but his sea-beat cave.

Saadi held the Muse in awe, She was his mistress and his law; A twelvemonth he could silence hold, Nor ran to speak till she him told; He felt the flame, the fanning wings, Nor offered words till they were things, Glad when the solid mountain swims In music and uplifting hymns.

Charmed from fagot and from steel, Harvests grew upon his tongue, Past and future must reveal All their heart when Saadi sung; Sun and moon must fall amain Like sower's seeds into his brain, There quickened to be born again. * 1.26

horizontal line

The free winds told him what they knew, Discoursed of fortune as they blew; Omens and signs that filled the air To him authentic witness bare; The birds brought auguries on their wings, And carolled undeceiving things Him to beckon, him to warn; Well might then the poet scorn To learn of scribe or courier Things writ in vaster character; And on his mind at dawn of day Soft shadows of the evening lay. * 1.27

PALE genius roves alone, No scout can track his way, None credits him till he have shown His diamonds to the day.

Not his the feaster's wine, Nor land, nor gold, nor power, By want and pain God screeneth him Till his elected hour.

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals:— The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls. * 1.28

I GRIEVE that better souls than mine Docile read my measured line: High destined youths and holy maids Hallow these my orchard shades; Environ me and me baptize With light that streams from gracious eyes. I dare not be beloved and known, I ungrateful, I alone.

Ever find me dim regards, Love of ladies, love of bards, Marked forbearance, compliments, Tokens of benevolence. What then, can I love myself? Fame is profitless as pelf, A good in Nature not allowed They love me, as I love a cloud Sailing falsely in the sphere, Hated mist if it come near.

FOR thought, and not praise; Thought is the wages For which I sell days, Will gladly sell ages And willing grow old Deaf, and dumb, and blind, and cold, Melting matter into dreams, Panoramas which I saw And whatever glows or seems Into substance, into Law. * 1.29

FOR Fancy's gift Can mountains lift; The Muse can knit What is past, what is done, With the web that's just begun; Making free with time and size, Dwindles here, there magnifies, Swells a rain-drop to a tun; So to repeat No word or feat Crowds in a day the sum of ages, And blushing Love outwits the sages. * 1.30

TRY the might the Muse affords And the balm of thoughtful words; Bring music to the desolate; Hang roses on the stony fate.

BUT over all his crowning grace, Wherefor thanks God his daily praise, Is the purging of his eye To see the people of the sky: From blue mount and headland dim Friendly hands stretch forth to him, Him they beckon, him advise Of heavenlier prosperities And a more excelling grace And a truer bosom-glow Than the wine-fed feasters know. They turn his heart from lovely maids, And make the darlings of the earth Swainish, coarse and nothing worth: Teach him gladly to postpone Pleasures to another stage Beyond the scope of human age, Freely as task at eve undone Waits unblamed to-morrow's sun.

By thoughts I lead Bards' to say what nations need; What imports, what irks and what behooves, Framed afar as Fates and Loves.

AND as the light divides the dark Through with living swords, So shall thou pierce the distant age With adamantine words.

I FRAMED his tongue to music, I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beauty And his heart the throne of Will.

FOR every God Obeys the hymn, obeys the ode.

FOR art, for music over-thrilled, The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled.

HOLD of the Maker, not the Made; Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad. * 1.31

THAT book is good Which puts me in a working mood. * 1.32 Unless to ThoUght is added Will, Apollo is an imbecile. What parts, what gems, what colors shine,— Ah, but I miss the grand design.

LIKE vaulters in a circus round Who leap from horse to horse, but never touch the ground.

FOR Genius made his cabin wide, And Love led Gods therein to bide.

THE atom displaces all atoms beside, And Genius unspheres all souls that abide.

TO transmute crime to wisdom, so to stem The vice of Japhet by the thought of Shem.

HE could condense cerulean ether Into the very best sole-leather.

FORBORE the ant-hill, shunned to tread, In mercy, on one little head.

I HAVE no brothers and no peers, And the dearest interferes: When I would spend a lonely day, Sun and moon are in my way.

THE brook sings on, but sings in vain Wanting the echo in my brain.

HE planted where the deluge ploughed, His hired hands were wind and cloud; His eyes detect the Gods concealed In the hummock of the field. * 1.33

FOR what need I of book or priest, Or sibyl from the mummied East, When every star is Bethlehem star? I count as many as there are Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, So many saints and saviors, So many high behaviors Salute the bard who is alive And only sees what he doth give.

COIN the day-dawn into lines In which its proper splendor shines; Coin the moonlight into verse Which all its marvel shall rehearse,

horizontal dotted line

Chasing with words fast-flowing things; nor try To plant thy shrivelled pedantry On the shoulders of the sky.

AH, not to me those dreams belong! A better voice peals through my song.

THE Muse's hill by Fear is guarded, A bolder foot is still rewarded.

HIS instant thought a poet spokes And filled the age his fame; An inch of ground the lightning strook But lit the sky with flame. * 1.34

IF bright the sun, he tarries, All day his song is heard; And when he goes he carries No more baggage than a bird.

THE Asmodean feat is mine, To spin my sand-heap into twine. * 1.35

SLIGHTED Minerva's learnèd tongue, But leaped with joy when on the wind The shell of Clio rung.

FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE

NATURE

THE patient Pan, Drunken with nectar, Sleeps or feigns slumber, Drowsily humming Music to the march of time. This poor tooting, creaking cricket, Pan, half asleep, rolling over His great body in the grass, Tooting, creaking, Feigns to sleep, sleeping never; 'T is his manner, Well he knows his own affair, Piling mountain chains of phlegm On the nervous brain of man, As he holds down central fires Under Alps and Andes cold; Haply else we could not live, Life would be too wild an ode. * 1.36

COME search the wood for flowers,— Wild tea and wild pea,

Grapevine and succory, Coreopsis And liatris, Flaunting in their bowers; Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony; Forest full of essences Fit for fairy presences, Peppermint and sassafras, Sweet fern, mint and vernal grass, Panax, black birch, sugar maple, Sweet and scent for Dian's table, EIder-blow, sarsaparilla, Wild rose, lily, dry vanilla,— Spices in the plants that run To bring their first fruits to the sun. Earliest heats that follow frore Nervèd leaf of hellebore, Sweet willow, checkerberry red, With its savory leaf for bread. Silver birch and black With the selfsame spice Found in polygala root and rind, Sassafras, fern, benzöine, Mouse-ear, cowslip, wintergreen, Which by aroma may compel The frost to spare, what scents so well.

WHERE the fungus broad-and red Lifts its head, Like poisoned loaf of elfin bread, Where the aster grew With the social goldenrod, In a chapel, which the dew Made beautiful for God:— O what would Nature say? She spared no speech to-day: The fungus and the bulrush spoke, Answered the pine-tree and the oak, The wizard South blew down the glen, Filled the straits and filled the wide, Each maple leaf turned up its silver side. All things shine in his smoky ray, And all we see are pictures high; Many a high hillside, While oaks of pride Climb to their tops, And boys run out upon their leafy ropes. The maple street In the houseless wood, Voices followed after, Every shrub and grape leaf Rang with fairy laughter. I have heard them fall Like the strain of all King Oberon's minstrelsy.

Would hear the everlasting And know the only strong? You must worship fasting, You must listen long. Words of the air Which birds of the air Carry aloft, below, around, To the isles of the deep, To the snow-capped steep, To the thundercloud.

FOR Nature, true and like in every place, Will hint her secret in a garden patch, Or in lone corners of a doleful heath, As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea, Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh; And, when I would recall the scenes I dreamed On Adirondac steeps, I know Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre, Assured to find the token once again In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam And peaceful woods beside my cottage door.

WHAT all the books of ages paint, I have. What prayers and dreams of youthful genius feign, I daily dwell in, and am not so blind But I can see the elastic tent of day Belike has wider hospitality Than my few needs exhaust, and bids me read The quaint devices on its mornings gay. Yet Nature will not be in full possessed, And they who truliest love her, heralds are And harbingers of a majestic race, Who, having more absorbed, more largely yield, And walk on earth as the sun walks in the sphere.

BUT never yet the man was found Who could the mystery expound, Though Adam, born when oaks were young, Endured, the Bible says, as long; BUt when at last the patriarch died The Gordian noose was still untied. He left, though goodly centuries old, Meek Nature's secret still untold.

ATOM from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

WHEN all their blooms the meadows flaunt To deck the morning of the year, Why tinge thy lustres jubilant With forecast or with fear?

Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.

THE sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin To use my land to put his rainbows in.

FOR joy and beauty planted it, With faerie gardens cheered, And boding Fancy haunted it With men and women weird.

WHAT central flowing forces, say, Make up thy splendor, matchless day?

DAY by day for her darlings to her much she added more; In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door, A door to something grander,—loftier walls, and vaster floor.

SHE paints with white and red the moors To draw the nations out of doors.

A SCORE of airy miles will smooth Rough Monadnoc to a gem.

THE EARTH

OUR eyeless bark sails free Though with boom and spar Andes, Alp or Himmalee, Strikes never moon or star. * 1.37

THE HEAVENS

WISP and meteor nightly falling, But the Stars of God remain.

TRANSITION

SEE yonder leafless trees against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And, ever subdividing, separate Limbs into branches, branches into twigs, As if they loved the element, and hasted To dissipate their being into it.

PARKS and ponds are good by day; I do not delight In black acres of the night, Nor my unseasoned step disturbs The sleeps of trees or dreams of herbs.

IN Walden wood the chickadee Runs round the pine and maple tree Intent on insect slaughter: O tufted entomologist! Devour as many as you list, Then drink in Walden water.

THE low December vault in June be lifted high, And largest clouds be flakes of down in that enormous sky.

THE GARDEN

MANY things the garden shows, And pleased I stray From tree to tree Watching the white pear-bloom, Bee-infested quince or plum. I could walk days, years, away Till the slow ripening, secular tree Had reached its fruiting-time, Nor think it long.

SOLAR insect on the wing In the garden murmuring, Soothing with thy summer horn Swains by winter pinched and worn.

BIRDS

DARLINGS of children and of bard, Perfect kinds by vice unmarred, All of worth and beauty set Gems in Nature's cabinet; These the fables she esteems Reality most like to dreams.

Welcome back, you little nations, Far-travelled in the south plantations; Bring your music and rhythmic flight, Your colors for our eyes' delight: Freely nestle in our roof, Weave your chamber weatherproof; And your enchanting manners bring And your autumnal gathering. Exchange in conclave general Greetings kind to each and all, Conscious each of duty done And unstainèd as the sun. * 1.38

WATER

THE water understands Civilization well; It wets my foot, but prettily It chills my life, but wittily, It is not disconcerted, It is not broken-hearted: Well used, it decketh joy, Adorneth, doubleth joy: Ill used, it will destroy, In perfect time and measure With a face of golden pleasure Elegantly destroy.

NAHANT

ALL day the waves assailed the rock, I heard no church-bell chime, The sea-beat scorns the minster clock And breaks the glass of Time. * 1.39

SUNRISE

WOULD you know what joy is hid In our green Musketaquid, And for travelled eyes what charms Draw us to these meadow farms, Come and I will show you all Makes each day a festival. Stand upon this pasture hill, Face the eastern star until The slow eye of heaven shall show The world above, the world below.

Behold the miracle! Thou saw'st but now the twilight sad And stood beneath the firmament, A watchman in a dark gray tent, Waiting till God create the earth,— Behold the new majestic birth!

The mottled clouds, like scraps of wool, Steeped in the light are beautiful. What majestic stillness broods Over these colored solitudes. Sleeps the vast East in pleasèd peace, Up the far mountain walls the streams increase Inundating the heaven With spouting streams and waves of light Which round the floating isles unite:— See the world below Baptized with the pure element, A clear and glorious firmament Touched with life by every beam. I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour:— This is not the ancient earth Whereof old chronicles relate The tragic tales of crime and fate; But rather, like its beads of dew And dew-bent violets, fresh and new, An exhalation of the time. * 1.40

horizontal dotted line

NIGHT IN JUNE

I LEFT my dreary page and sallied forth, Received the fair inscriptions of the night;

The moon was making amber of the world, Glittered with silver every cottage pane, The trees were rich, yet ominous with gloom. The meadows broad From ferns and grapes and from the folded flowers Sent a nocturnal fragrance; harlot flies Flashed their small fires in air, or held their court In fairy groves of herds-grass.

HE lives not who can refuse me; All my force saith, Come and use me: A gleam of sun, a summer rain, And all the zone is green again.

SEEMS, though the soft sheen all enchants, Cheers the rough crag and mournful dell, As if on such stern forms and haunts A wintry storm more fitly fell.

PUT in, drive home the sightless wedges And split to flakes the crystal ledges.

MAIA

ILLUSION works impenetrable, Weaving webs innumerable, Her gay pictures never fail, Crowds each on other, veil on veil, Charmer who will be believed By man who thirsts to be deceived.

ILLUSIONS like the tints of pearl, Or changing colors of the sky, Or ribbons of a dancing girl That mend her beauty to the eye.

THE cold gray down upon the quinces lieth And the poor spinners weave their webs thereon To share the sunshine that so spicy is.

SAMSON stark, at Dagon's knee, Gropes for columns strong as he; When his ringlets grew and curled, Groped for axle of the world.

BUT Nature whistled with all her winds, Did as she pleased and went her way. * 1.41

LIFE

A TRAIN of gay and clouded days Dappled with joy and grief and praise, Beauty to fire us, saints to save, Escort us to a little grave.

NO fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, For God hath writ all dooms magnificent, So guilt not traverses his tender will.

AROUND the man who seeks a noble end, Not angels but divinities attend. * 1.42

FROM high to higher forces The scale of power uprears, The heroes on their horses, The gods upon their spheres.

This shining moment is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild.

ROOMY Eternity Casts her schemes rarely, And an æon allows For each quality and part Of the multitudinous And many-chambered heart.

THE beggar begs by God's command, And gifts awake when givers sleep, Swords cannot cut the giving hand Nor stab the love that orphans keep.

IN the chamber, on the stairs, Lurking dumb, Go and come Lemurs and Lars. * 1.43

SUCH another peerless queen Only could her mirror show.

EASY to match what others do, Perform the feat as well as they; Hard to out-do the brave, the true, And find a loftier way: The school decays, the learning spoils BeCause of the sons of wine; How snatch the stripling from their toils?— Yet can one ray of truth divine The blaze of revellers' feasts outshine.

OF all wit's uses the main one Is to live well with who has none.

THE tongue is prone to lose the way, Not so the pen, for in a letter We have not better things to say, But surely say them better. * 1.44

SHE walked in flowers around my field As June herself around the sphere.

FRIENDS to me are frozen wine; I wait the sun on them should shine. * 1.45

YOU shall not love me for what daily spends; You shall not know me in the noisy street, Where I, as others, follow petty ends; Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet; Nor when I'm jaded, sick, anxious or mean. But love me then and only, when you know Me for the channel of the rivers of God From deep ideal fontal heavens that flow.

TO and fro the Genius flies, A light which plays and hovers Over the maiden's head And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes. Of her faults I take no note, Fault and folly are not mine; Comes the Genius,—all's forgot, Replunged again into that upper sphere He scatters wide and wild its lustres here. * 1.46

Love Asks nought his brother cannot give; Asks nothing, but does all receive. Love calls not to his aid events; He to his wants can well suffice: Asks not of others soft consents, Nor kind occasion without eyes; Nor plots to ope or bolt a gate, Nor heeds Condition's iron walls,— Where he goes, goes before him Fate; Whom he uniteth, God installs; Instant and perfect his access To the dear object of his thought, Though foes and land and seas between Himself and his love intervene. * 1.47

THE brave Empedocles, defying fools, Pronounced the word that mortals hate to hear— "I am divine, I am not mortal made; I am superior to my human weeds." Not Sense but Reason is the Judge of truth; Reason's twofold, part human, part divine; That human pan may be described and taught, The other portion language cannot speak. * 1.48

TELL men what they knew before; Paint the prospect from their door.

HIM strong Genius urged to roam, Stronger Custom brought him home.

THAT each should in his house abide, Therefore was the world so wide.

THOU shalt make thy house The temple of a nation's vows. Spirits of a higher strain Who sought thee once shall seek again. I detected many a god Forth already on the road, Ancestors of beauty come In thy breast to make a home.

THE archangel Hope Looks to the azure cope, Waits through dark ages for the morn, Defeated day by day, but unto victory born.

AS the drop feeds its fated flower, As finds its Alp the snowy shower, Child of the omnific Need, Hurled into life to do a deed, Man drinks the water, drinks the light.

EVER the Rock of Ages melts Into the mineral air, To be the quarry whence to build Thought and its mansions fair.

GO if thou wilt, ambrosial flower, Go match thee with thy seeming peers; I will wait Heaven's perfect hour Through the innumerable years.

YES, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent, A thing that takes no more root in the world Than doth the traveller's shadow on the rock.

BUT if thou do thy best, Without remission, without rest, And invite the sunbeam, And abhor to feign or seem Even to those who thee should love And thy behavior approve; If thou go in thine own likeness, Be it health, or be it sickness; If thou go as thy father's son, If thou wear no mask or lie, Dealing purely and nakedly,—

horizontal dotted line

ASCENDING thorough just degrees To a consummate holiness, As angel blind to trespass done, And bleaching all souls like the sun.

FROM the stores of eldest matter, The deep-eyed flame, obedient waters Transparent air, all-feeding earth, He took the flower of all their worth, And, best with best in sweet consent, Combined a new temperament.

REX

THE bard and mystic held me for their own, I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids, I took the friendly noble by the hand, I was the trustee of the hand-cart man, The brother of the fisher, porter, swain, And these from the crowd's edge well pleased beheld The service done to me as done to them. * 1.49

WITH the key of the secret he marches faster, From strength to strength, and for night brings day; While classes or tribes, too weak to master The flowing conditions of life, give way.

SUUM CUIQUE

WILT thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.

IF curses be the wage of love, Hide in thy skies, thou fruitless Jove, Not to be named: It is clear Why the gods will not appear; They are ashamed.

WHEN wrath and terror changed Jove's regal port, And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short.

SHUN passion, fold the hands of thrift, Sit still and Truth is near: Suddenly it will uplift Your eyelids to the sphere: Wait a little, you shall see The portraiture of things to be.

THE rules to men made evident By Him who built the day, The columns of the firmament Not firmer based than they.

ON bravely through the sunshine and the showers! Time hath his work to do and we have ours.

THE BOHEMIAN HYMN

IN many forms we try To utter God's infinity, But the boundless hath no form, And the Universal Friend Doth as far transcend An angel as a worm.

The great Idea baffles wit, Language falters under it, It leaves the learned in the lurch; Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find The measure of the eternal Mind, Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church. * 1.50

GRACE

How much, preventing God, how much I owe To the defences thou hast round me set; Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,— These scorned bondmen were my parapet. I dare not peep over this parapet To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended, Had not these me against myself defended. * 1.51

INSIGHT

POWER that by obedience grows, Knowledge which its source not knows, Wave which severs whom it bears From the things which he compares, Adding wings through things to range, To his own blood harsh and strange. * 1.52

PAN

O WHAT are heroes, prophets, men, But pipes through which the breath of Pan doth blow A momentary music. Being's tide Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms Live, robed with beauty, painted by the sun; Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God, Throbs with an overmastering energy Knowing and doing. Ebbs the tide, they lie White hollow shells upon the desert shore, But not the less the eternal wave rolls on To animate new millions, and exhale Races and planets, its enchanted foam. * 1.53

MONADNOC FROM AFAR

DARK flower of Cheshire garden, Red evening duly dyes Thy sombre head with rosy hues To fix far-gazing eyes. Well the Planter knew how strongly Works thy form on human thought; I muse what secret purpose had he To draw all fancies to this spot. * 1.54

SEPTEMBER

IN the turbulent beauty Of a gusty Autumn day, Poet on a sunny headland Sighed his soul away.

Farms the sunny landscape dappled, Swandown clouds dappled the farms, Cattle lowed in mellow distance Where far oaks outstretched their arms.

Sudden gusts came full of meaning, All too much to him they said, Oh, south winds have long memories, Of that be none afraid.

I cannot tell rude listeners Half the tell-tale South-wind said,— 'T would bring the blushes of yon maples To a man and to a maid. * 1.55

EROS

THEY put their finger on their lip, The Powers above: The seas their islands clip, The moons in ocean dip, They love, but name not love.

OCTOBER

OCTOBER woods wherein The boy's dream comes to pass, And Nature squanders on the boy her pomp, And crowns him with a more than royal crown, And unimagined splendor waits his steps. The gazing urchin walks through tents of gold, Through crimson chambers, porphyry and pearl, Pavilion on pavilion, garlanded, Incensed and starred with lights and airs and shapes, Color and sound, music to eye and ear, Beyond the best conceit of pomp or power. * 1.56

PETER'S FIELD * 1.57

[KNOWS he who tills this lonely field To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield At midnight and at morn?]

That field by spirits bad and good, By Hell and Heaven is haunted, And every rood in the hemlock wood I know is ground enchanted.

[In the long sunny afternoon The plain was full of ghosts: I wandered up, I wandered down, Beset by pensive hosts.]

For in those lonely grounds the sun Shines not as on the town, In nearer arcs his journeys run, And nearer stoops the moon.

There in a moment I have seen The buried Past arise; The fields of Thessaly grew green, Old gods forsook the skies.

I cannot publish in my rhyme What pranks the greenwood played; It was the Carnival of time, And Ages went or stayed.

To me that spectral nook appeared The mustering Day of Doom, And round me swarmed in shadowy troop Things past and things to come.

The darkness haunteth me elsewhere; There I am full of light; In every whispering leaf I hear More sense than sages write.

Underwoods were full of pleasance, All to each in kindness bend, And every flower made obeisance As a man unto his friend.

Far seen, the river glides below, Tossing one sparkle to the eyes: I catch thy meaning, wizard wave; The River of my Life replies. * 1.58

MUSIC

LET me go where'er I will, I bear a sky-born music still: It sounds from all things old, It sounds from all things young, From all that's fair, from all that's foul, Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose, It is not only in the bird, Not only where the rainbow glows, Nor in the song of woman heard, But in the darkest, meanest things There alway, alway something sings.

'T is not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cup of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There alway, alway something sings. * 1.59

THE WALK

A QUEEN rejoices in her peers, And wary Nature knows her own By court and city, dale and down, And like a lover volunteers, And to her son will treasures more And more to purpose freely pour In one wood walk, than learned men Can find with glass in ten times ten. * 1.60

COSMOS

WHO saw the hid beginnings When Chaos and Order strove, Or who can date the morning, The purple flaming of love?

I saw the hid beginnings When Chaos and Order strove, And I can date the morning prime And purple flame of love.

Song breathed from all the forest, The total air was fame; It seemed the world was all torches That suddenly caught the flame.

horizontal dotted line

Is there never a retroscope mirror In the realms and corners of space That can give us a glimpse of the battle And the soldiers face to face?

Sit here on the basalt courses Where twisted hills betray The seat of the world-old Forces Who wrestled here on a day.

horizontal dotted line

When the purple flame shoots up, And Love ascends his throne, I cannot hear your songs, O birds, For the witchery of my own.

And every human heart Still keeps that golden day And rings the bells of jubilee On its own First of May. * 1.61

THE MIRACLE

I HAVE trod this path a hundred times With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes. I know each nest and web-worm's tent, The fox-hole which the woodchucks rent, Maple and oak, the old Divan Self-planted twice, like the banian. I know not why I came again Unless to learn it ten times ten. To read the sense the woods impart You must bring the throbbing heart. Love is aye the counterforce,— Terror and Hope and wild Remorse, Newest knowledge, fiery thought, Or Duty to grand purpose wrought. Wandering yester morn the brake, I reached this heath beside the lake, And oh, the wonder of the power, The deeper secret of the hour! Nature, the supplement of man, His hidden sense interpret can;— What friend to friend cannot convey Shall the dumb bird instructed say. Passing yonder oak, I heard Sharp accents of my woodland bird;

I watched the singer with delight,— But mark what changed my joy to fright,— When that bird sang, I gave the theme; That wood-bird sang my last night's dream, A-brown wren was the Daniel That pierced my trance its drift to tell, Knew my quarrel, how and why, Published it to lake and sky, Told every word and syllable In his flippant chirping babble, All my wrath and all my shames, Nay, God is witness, gave the names. * 1.62

THE WATERFALL

A PATCH of meadow upland Reached by a mile of road, Soothed by the voice of waters, With birds and flowers bestowed. * 1.63

Hither I come for strength Which well it can supply, For Love draws might from terrene force And potencies of sky.

The tremulous battery Earth Responds to the touch of man; It thrills to the antipodes, From Boston to Japan.

The planets' child the planet knows And to his joy replies; To the lark's trill unfolds the rose, Clouds flush their gayest dyes.

When Ali prayed and loved Where Syrian waters roll, Upward the ninth heaven thrilled and moved At the tread of the jubilant soul.

WALDEN * 1.64

IN my garden three ways meet, Thrice the spot is blest; Hermit-thrush comes there to build, Carrier-doves to nest.

There broad-armed oaks, the copses' maze, The cold sea-wind detain; Here sultry Summer overstays When Autumn chills the plain.

Self-sown my stately garden grows; The winds and wind-blown seed, Cold April rain and colder snows My hedges plant and feed.

From mountains far and valleys near The harvests sown to-day Thrive in all weathers without fear,— Wild planters, plant away!

In cities high the careful crowds Of woe-worn mortals darkling go, But in these sunny solitudes My quiet roses blow.

Methought the sky looked scornful down On all was base in man, And airy tongues did taunt the town, ' Achieve our peace who can!'

What need I holier dew Than Walden's haunted wave, Distilled from heaven's alembic blue, Steeped in each forest cave?

[If Thought unlock her mysteries, If Friendship on me smile, I walk in marble galleries, I talk with kings the while.]

How drearily in College hall The Doctor stretched the hours, But in each pause we heard the call Of robins out of doors.

The air is wise, the wind thinks well, And all through which it blows, If plants or brain, if egg or shell, Or bird or biped knows;

And oft at home'mid tasks I heed, I heed how wears the day; We must not halt while fiercely speed The spans of life away.

What boots it here of Thebes or Rome Or lands of Eastern day? In forests I am still at home And there I cannot stray.

THE ENCHANTER

IN the deep heart of man a poet dwells Who all the day of life his summer story tells; Scatters on every eye dust of his spells, Scent, form and color; to the flowers and shells

Wins the believing child with wondrous tales; Touches a cheek with colors of romance, And crowds a history into a glance; Gives beauty to the lake and fountain, Spies oversea the fires of the mountain; When thrushes ope their throat, 't is he that sings, And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings. The little Shakspeare in the maiden's heart Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart; Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed And gives persuasion to a gentle deed. * 1.65

WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF GOETHE

SIX thankful weeks,—and let it be A meter of prosperity,— In my coat I bore this book, And seldom therein could I look, For I had too much to think, Heaven and earth to eat and drink. Is he hapless who can spare In his plenty things so rare? * 1.66

RICHES

HAVE ye seen the caterpillar Foully warking in his nest? 'T is the poor man getting siller, Without cleanness, without rest.

Have ye seen the butterfly In braw claithing drest? 'T is the poor man gotten rich, In rings and painted vest.

The poor man crawls in web of rags And sore bested with woes. But when he flees on riches' wings, He laugheth at his foes. * 1.67

PHILOSOPHER

PHILOSOPHERS are lined with eyes within, And, being so, the sage unmakes the man. In love, he cannot therefore cease his trade; Scarce the first blush has overspread his cheek, He feels it, introverts his learned eye To catch the unconscious heart in the very act.

His mother died,—the only friend he had,— Some tears escaped, but his philosophy Couched like a cat sat watching close behind And throttled all his passion. Is't not like That devil-spider that devours her mate Scarce freed from her embraces? * 1.68

INTELLECT

GRAVELY it broods apart on joy, And, truth to tell, amused by pain.

LIMITS

WHO knows this or that? Hark in the wall to the rat: Since the world was, he has gnawed; Of his wisdom, of his fraud What dost thou know? In the wretched little beast Is life and heart, Child and parent, Not without relation To fruitful field and sun and moon. What art thou? His wicked eye Is cruel to thy cruelty. * 1.69

INSCRIPTION FOR A WELL IN MEMORY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE WAR * 1.70

FALL, stream, from Heaven to bless; return as well; So did our sons; Heaven met them as they fell.

THE EXILE

* 1.71

THE heavy blue chain Of the boundless main Didst thou, just man, endure.

I HAVE an arrow that will find its mark, A mastiff that will bite without a bark.

Notes

• * 1.1

  THE POET. Page 309 This poem, called in its early form "The Discontented Poet, a Masque," was begun as early as 1838, probably earlier. It received additions through several years and was much improved, but Mr. Emerson never completed it.

  "The Poet" seems to have been written parallel, so to speak, with the lectures on the same theme which are condensed into the opening essay in the Second Series. It was written in the years when Emerson, who saw God and Man and Nature as a poet in the highest sense sees them, was struggling through impediments towards a fitting expression of his vision or thought in verse. He soon discarded the first title and such morbid lines as had been written during a somewhat unrestful period. He felt, as he told a friend, that these desires contained the promise of their fulfilment. The poem truly pictures his own method of seeking inspiration, sitting under the pines in Walden woods by day and walking alone under the stars by night, —listening always. The stanza beginning, —

  The sun set, but set not his hope

  (used as the motto for "Character") and that preceding it, show his happy patience, secure that his time would come.

  "The Poet" as here printed has a reasonable unity, but around it was a system of satellite pieces on this favorite topic, of a later date and more musical. In these, the poet is called Saadi, or, as often more convenient for metre, Said or Seyd.

  Dr. Holmes was greatly interested in these poems. I quote from his Memoir of his friend:—

  "If any doubter wishes to test his fitness for reading them, and if the poems already mentioned are not enough to settle the question, let him read the paragraph of 'May-Day,' beginning, —

  'I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,'

  'Seashore,' the fine fragments in the Appendix to his published works, called, collectively, 'The Poet,' blocks bearing the mark of poetic genius, but left lying round for want of the structural instinct, and last of all that which is, in many respects, first of all, the 'Threnody.'"
• * 1.2

  Page 309, note 1. Journal, 1839.

  "The poet is a namer. His success is a new nomenclature."

  "Though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer."—"The Poet," Essays, Second Series.
• * 1.3

  Page 309, note 2. In his Introduction to Professor W. W. Goodwin's revision of Plutarch's Morals, Mr. Emerson quotes Plutarch's sentence:

  "Were there not a sun, we might, for all the other stars, pass our days in the 'Reverend Dark,' as Heracleitus calls it."
• * 1.4

  Page 310, note 1. Compare the last sentence in "Man the Reformer," Nature, Addresses and Lectures.
• * 1.5

  Page 310, note 2. Mr. Emerson once spoke of his joy when, as a boy, he

  "caught the first hint of the Berkeleyan philosophy. I could see that there was a Cause behind every stump and clod, and by the help of some fine words could make every old wagon and wood-pile and stone wall oscillate a little and threaten to dance; nay, give me a fair field, and the select men of Concord and the Reverend Pound-me-down himself began to look unstable and vaporous."

  He said in a lecture, of Shakspeare,

  "He is the chosen closet companion, who can, at any moment, by incessant surprises, work the miracle of mythologizing every fact of the common life."
• * 1.6

  Page 310, note 3. In the essay on Domestic Life, Society and Solitude, Mr. Emerson dwells on the inestimable advantage of comparative poverty to youth.
• * 1.7

  Page 311, note 1. Journal, 1838.

  "The intellectual nomadism is the faculty of Objectiveness or of Eyes which everywhere feed themselves. Who hath such eyes, everywhere falls into true relations with his fellow men. Every man, every object is a prize, a study, a property to him, and this love smooths his brow, joins him to men and makes him beautiful and beloved in their sight. His house is a wagon, he roams through all latitudes as easily as a Calmuc. He must meantime abide by his inward law as the Calmuc by his Khan."—See "History," Essays, First Series, pp. 22, 23.
• * 1.8

  Page 311, note 2. The correspondences and harmonies are dwelt on in other poems, as in "Merlin," II., and in the passage in the second "Woodnotes"— vv

  Come learn with me the fatal song, etc.
• * 1.9

  Page 312, note 1. Compare the essay on the Poet, in Essays, Second Series, pp. 25 and 39.
• * 1.10

  Page 313, note 1. See in Conduct of Life, "Beauty," p. 304.
• * 1.11

  Page 314, note 1. This stanza was used by Mr. Emerson as motto for the essay on Character.
• * 1.12

  Page 314, note 2. Journal, 1837.

  "To-night I walked under the stars through the snow, and stopped and looked at my fir sparklers and heard the voice of the wind, so slight and pure and deep as if it were the sound of the stars themselves revolving."

  1841.

  "Last night a walk to the river... and saw the moon in the broken water, interrogating, interrogating."
• * 1.13

  Page 315, note 1. "1838, 24 June, Sunday. Forever the night addresses the imagination, and the interrogating soul within or behind all its functions, and now in the summer night, which makes the earth more habitable, the more. Strange that forever we do not exhaust the wonder and meaning of these stars, points of light merely, but still they speak and ask and warn, each moment with new mind."
• * 1.14

  Page 315, note 2.

  "The power of music, the power of poetry, to unfix and as it were clap wings to solid nature, interprets the riddle of Orpheus."—"History," Essays, First Series, p. 31.
• * 1.15

  Page 316, note 1. In

  "The Transcendentalist" ( Nature, Addresses and Lectures, pp. 341-343) the eager youth who seem to themselves born out of time are described.
• * 1.16

  Page 316, note 2. Some sentences in the concluding passage of the essay on the Poet recall this stanza picturing the touching loyalty of the family to the man of genius.
• * 1.17

  Page 317, note 1. Composure is the first virtue of man, as modesty is that of woman.
• * 1.18

  Page 317, note 2. The opening passage of Mr. Emerson's first book, Nature, shows the inspiration which he found in the heavenly bodies, and the lesson to be found in their beauty and their ordered motion. Every astronomical fact interested him.
• * 1.19

  Page 319, note 1. The doctrine of the Universal Mind.
• * 1.20

  Page 320, note 1. Compare the passage in Mr. Emerson's Address to the Divinity Students beginning,

  "The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment,"

  etc.

  In the journal for 1840, he wrote thoughts which occur in the last two stanzas:

  "The moon keeps its appointment— will not the good Spirit? Wherefore have we labored and fasted, say we, and thou takest no note? Let him not take note, if he please to hide,—then it were sublime beyond a poet's dreams still to labor and abstain and obey, and, if thou canst, to put the good spirit in the wrong. That were a feat to sing in Elysium, on Olympus, by the waters of life in the New Jerusalem."

  The last seven lines of the poem were, however, written in 1831.
• * 1.21

  FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND THE POETIC GIFT. Page 320. What Dr. Holmes says in his chapter on the Poems is especially true of these fragments:

  "The poet reveals himself under the protection of his imaginative and melodious phrases,—the flowers and jewels of his vocabulary."

  The first part of this poem was written in 1845; from it Mr. Emerson took the motto for "Beauty," the first ten lines of which followed

  At court he sat in the grave Divan,

  and the rest of the motto followed

  And etiquette of gentilesse.
• * 1.22

  Page 322, note 1. In the essay on Inspiration, in Letters and Social Aims, after quoting what the poet Gray said of the Æolian harp, Mr. Emerson adds:—

  "Perhaps you can recall a delight like it, which spoke to the eye, when you have stood by a lake in the woods in summer, and saw where little flaws of wind whip spots or patches of still water into fleets of ripples, — so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it was more like the rippling of the Aurora Borealis at night than any spectacle of day."
• * 1.23

  Page 323, note 1. In his journal of 1842, he wrote under the heading "To-day":—

  "But my increasing value of the present moment, to which I gladly abandon myself when I can, is destroying my Sun day respects, which always, no doubt, have some regard to the State and conservatism. But when to-day is great I fling all the world's future into the sea."

  Mr. Emerson, from childhood to age, had reverence for worship, and for public worship, but as he grew in mind and spirit he felt himself cramped by creeds and forms. He found he could worship to more purpose in solitude and in the presence of Nature. He always gladly heard a true preacher, and in his old age, when his critical sense was dulled and the passing Day had fewer gifts for him, he liked to go to the Concord church, were it only for association's sake.
• * 1.24

  Page 323, note 2. Hassan the camel-driver was, without doubt, Mr. Emerson's sturdy neighbor, Mr. Edmund Hosmer, for whom he had great respect. The camels were the slow oxen, then universally used for farm-work, with which Mr. Hosmer ploughed the poet's fields for him. Compare what is said of manual labor in Nature, Addresses and Lectures, pp. 236-238.
• * 1.25

  Page 324, note 1. Journal, 1855.

  "What I said in one of my Saadi scraps of verse, I might say in good sooth, that —

  Thus the high Muse treated me,Directly never greeted me, etc.

  My best thought came from others. I heard in their words my own meaning, but a deeper sense than they put on them: and could well and best express myself in other people's phrases, but to finer purpose than they knew."

  The thought of the last five lines is given more fully in "Art" ( Essays, First Series, pp. 360, 361).
• * 1.26

  Page 326, note 1. Sun and moon and everything in Nature are symbols, seeds which quicken in their interpretation, which the poet finds for mankind.
• * 1.27

  Page 326, note 2. These lines are a more pleasing version of the motto to the essay on Fate, in Conduct of Life, with two introductory lines, and without the less poetical ending lines which were used by Mr. Emerson in the poem "Fate."
• * 1.28

  Page 327, note 1. The last verse is the motto to "Intellect" in Essays, First Series.
• * 1.29

  Page 328, note 1. This in the verse-book is called "Terminus."
• * 1.30

  Page 328, note 2. These lines appear to have been part of a poem called "Bacchus" that was never completed, referred to in the note to', Bacchus."
• * 1.31

  Page 331, note 1. This thought is more fully stated in "Fate" ( Conduct of Life, p. 26) and in "Self-Reliance" ( Essays, First Series, p. 71).
• * 1.32

  Page 331, note 2. See "Inspiration," Letters and Social Aims, p. 296
• * 1.33

  Page 332, note 1. These lines, it is seen in one of the verse-books, describe the true poet; he re-creates, by showing what creation signifies, and thoughts are the seed he sows.
• * 1.34

  Page 334, note 1.

  "Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world."

  —"Politics," Essays, Second Series.
• * 1.35

  Page 334, note 2. Asmodeus was an evil spirit. He is mentioned in the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha. Students of the Black Art held that demons could be kept out of mischief by setting them at hopeless tasks, like making ropes out of sand. The braid-like effect of the wave-markings in shoal water suggested the idea. Mr. Emerson always found it hard to make a tissue out of the thoughts which came to him — he spoke of them once as

  "infinitely repellent particles."
• * 1.36

  FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE. Page 335, note 1. In the leading essay in Natural History of Intellect is this passage on the Greek symbolizing of Nature in the god Pan:—

  "Pan, that is, All. His habit was to dwell in mountains, lying on the ground, tooting like a cricket in the sun, refusing to speak, clinging to his behemoth ways. He could intoxicate by the strain of his shepherd's pipe,—silent yet to most, for his pipes make the music of the spheres, which, because it sounds eternally, is not heard at all by the dull, but only by the mind. He wears a coat of leopard spots or stars. He could terrify by earth-born fears called panics. Yet was he in the secret of Nature and could look both before and after. He was only seen under disguises, and was not represented by any outward image; a terror sometimes, at others a placid omnipotence."
• * 1.37

  Page 341, note 1. This was originally in the rough draft of Monadnoc, in which is the image,—

  Of the bullet of the earthWhereon ye sail, etc.
• * 1.38

  Page 344, note 1, Another version of a passage in "May-Day."

  This little note in praise of the animal creation is from one of the verse-books:—

  See how Romance adheresTo the deer, the lion,And every bird,Because they are freeAnd have no master but Law.On the wild ice in depths of sea,On Alp or Andes' side,In the vast abyss of air,The bird, the flying cloud,The fire, the wind, the element,—These have not manners coarse or cowed,And no borrowed will,But graceful as cloud and flameAll eyes with pleasure fill.
• * 1.39

  Page 345, note 1. Journal, 1853.

  "At Nahant the eternal play of the sea seems the anti-dock, or destroyer of the memory of time."
• * 1.40

  Page 346, note 1. These verses were probably written while Mr. Emerson was visiting Dr. Ezra Ripley (his step-grandfather, always kind and hospitable) at the Manse, after his return from Europe in 1833. Opposite the house is a pasture-hill giving a fine view of the great meadows to the eastward, and, on the western horizon, of some of the mountains on the New Hampshire line.
• * 1.41

  Page 348, note 1. Journal, 1860.

  "We can't make half a bow and say, I honor and despise you. But Nature can: she whistles with all her winds and—does as she pleases."
• * 1.42

  LIFE. Page 349, note 1. See the Address to the Divinity Students ( Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 124).
• * 1.43

  Page 350, note 1. The Lemures were the household ghosts, and the Lares the household divinities of the Latins.
• * 1.44

  Page 351, note 1. See "Friendship" (Essays, First Series, pp. 191, 211).
• * 1.45

  Page 352, note 1. The same thought is in the poem "Rubies."
• * 1.46

  Page 352, note 2. The first four lines are in "The Dæmonic Love."
• * 1.47

  Page 353, note 1. These verses are written in the older verse-book on the same page with "Eros."
• * 1.48

  Page 353, note 2.

  "Statements of the infinite are usually felt to be unjust to the finite, and blasphemous. Empedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought, when he said, 'I am God;' but the moment it was out of his mouth it became a lie to the ear; and the world revenged itself for the seeming arrogance by the good story about his shoe"

  ("The Method of Nature," Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 198). See also Conduct of Life, p. 26. Empedocles, the common people believed, threw himself into the crater of Mount Ætna that no trace of his death might appear, and it be supposed that he was translated. Hence, when the volcano cast up his brazen sandal, they were pleased.
• * 1.49

  Page 357, note 1. In the verse-book, Mr. Emerson gives to these lines the title "Rex," but "The Related Man" might have been better. He delighted in such, as much when he observed them (not, however, filling the dream of high, poetic maids, or consorting with bards and mystics) in the grocery, or insurance-office of the village, as when he saw the master minds of the growing Republic in cities, East or West.
• * 1.50

  THE BOHEMIAN HYMN. Page 359, note 1. This poem appears but once in the verse-books, and no traces of its composition remain, nor is it dated. But from the handwriting it must have been written before 1840, and the internal evidence is convincing that it was written by Mr. Emerson.

  Compare a passage in Representative Men, pp. 61, 62.
• * 1.51

  GRACE. Page 359, note 2. The Memoir of Margaret Fuller Ossoli was written by her friends, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. William Henry Charming and Mr. Emerson. Mr. Emerson, writing to Mr. Charming about their joint work, referred to this poem thus:—

  "For your mottoes to your chapter, I saw that the first had the infinite honor done it of being quoted to Herbert! The verses are mine,—'Preventing God,' etc.,—so I strike them out."

  The poem was published in the Dial of January, 1842.
• * 1.52

  INSIGHT. Page 360, note 1. This title was given by the editor. The verses have none, and perhaps could be better named. Mr. Emerson wrote the first line also in these forms:—

  Rule that by obedience grows,

  and

  Power which by service grows.
• * 1.53

  PAN. Page 360, note 2. Mr. Emerson seems to have considered other titles, as "Pantheos," and "Divine Afflatus." He wrote in the second line

  "the breath of God,"

  but afterwards decided to use the classical image. By the parables of the divine music played through human pipes, and of the tide of spirit inundating mankind, he teaches the ancient doctrine of Inspiration. In a note-book of 1830 he wrote,

  "Heracleitus said, 'The senses are canals through which we inhale the divine reason.'"

  Everywhere in the Essays the over-soul is taught, especially in the essay of that name.
• * 1.54

  MONADNOC FROM AFAR. Page 361, note 1. It is strange that Mr. Emerson never printed this little poem. It probably was written not much later than "Monadnoc."
• * 1.55

  SEPTEMBER. Page 362, note 1. These verses have never been printed in full except by Mr. Channing in his Thoreau, the Poet Naturalist. The text there varies slightly from that here selected as the best version from the journals.
• * 1.56

  OCTOBER. Page 362, note 2. See Society and Solitude,p. 298.
• * 1.57

  PETER'S FIELD. Page 363. This poem on the memories and associations of the field by the Concord River, where Mr. Emerson and his brothers walked in youth, must be of earlier date than the "Dirge." It has two verses in common with this, here bracketed.

  Here is another account of the brothers' joys,—

  We sauntered amidst miracles,We were the fairies of the fells,The summer was our quaint bouquet,The winter-eve our Milky Way;We played in turn with all the slidesIn Nature's lamp of suns and tides;We pierced all books with criticism,We plied with doubts the catechism,The Christian fold,The Bible old—
• * 1.58

  Page 364, note 1. Among the more youthful pieces at the end of this volume is another poem on the River and its associations.
• * 1.59

  MUSIC. Page 365, note 1. The present editor obtained Mr. Cabot's permission to include this among the minor poems in the Appendix to the posthumous edition of the Works in 1883, even though Dr. Holmes made some protest against allowing the

  "mud and scum of things"

  to have a voice. At the celebration of the recent centenary of Mr. Emerson's birth, it was pleasant to see that the poem had become a favorite, even with children, and was often quoted.
• * 1.60

  THE WALK. Page 366, note 1. Mr. Emerson, after a happy walk with Thoreau, wrote in his journal in 1857:

  "To Nero advertising for a new pleasure, a walk in the woods should have been offered. 'T is one of the secrets for dodging old age."
• * 1.61

  COSMOS. Page 367, note 1. These verses have no title in the verse-books. "Cosmos" is given by the editor. They were originally trials for a "Song of Nature,"—Nature is speaking. The May element claimed the later verses, though their sequence was never made out, the first divisions harmonizing fairly, but the last two hopelessly dislocated, though they have a certain charm.
• * 1.62

  THE MIRACLE. Page 369, note 1. This poem was written at about the same period with "My Garden," "Boston" and "Waldeinsamkeit," between 1857 and 1865.
• * 1.63

  THE WATERFALL. Page 369, note 2. In addition to his Walden wood-lots, Mr. Emerson bought one on the edge of Lincoln, for the sake of a miniature waterfall in a little brook, the outlet of Flint's Pond. Mr. Thoreau showed him additional charms, certain shrubs and flowers not plentiful in Concord that grew on its banks,—veratrum with its tropical growth, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, yellow violets, and the hornbeam, arrow-wood and a bush of mountain laurel. It was a wonderful resort for the various kinds of thrushes.
• * 1.64

  WALDEN. Page 370. This poem represents the early form of "My Garden." As years went on, verses were added, and at last the groups became distinct.
• * 1.65

  THE ENCHANTER. Page 373, note 1.

  "Shakspeare is theonly biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us, that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour."— Representative Men, p. 208.
• * 1.66

  GOETHE. Page 373, note 2. Mr. Emerson read Goethe's works through, largely out of his love for Carlyle, who constantly praised Goethe to him. Writing to his friend, in April, 1840, he said:—

  "You asked me if I read German.... I have contrived to read almost every volume of Goethe, and I have fifty-five [these were little leather-bound duodecimos], but I have read nothing else [i.e. in German], but I have not now looked even into Goethe, for a long time."

  This letter shows approximately the date of the verses.
• * 1.67

  RICHES. Page 374, note 1. There seems to be no question that this is Mr. Emerson's work, in spite of the Scottish garb in which, for his amusement, he clothed the little simile. It has no title in the verse-book.
• * 1.68

  PHILOSPHER and INTELLECT. Page 375, note 1. There is a passage in the journal for 1845, called "Icy light," on the cold-bloodedness of the philosopher, most of which is printed in Representative Men:—

  "Intellect puts an interval.... It is the chief deduction, almost the sole deduction from the merit of Plato (that which is no doubt incidental to this regnancy of the intellect in his work), that his writings have not the vital authority which the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. There is an interval; and to the cohesion, contact is necessary. Intellect is the king of non-committal: answers with generalities. He gave me wit instead of love."
• * 1.69

  LIMITS. Page 375, note 2. See "History," in Essays, First Series, pp. 39, 40.
• * 1.70

  INSCRIPTION. Page 376. This was written at the request of Mrs. John M. Forbes, and is carved on a stone watering fountain on the top of Milton Hill.
• * 1.71

  (AFTER TALIESSIN)