So shall the drudge in dusty frockSpy behind the city clockRetinues of airy kings,Skirts of angels, starry wings,His fathers shining in bright fables,His children fed at heavenly tables."Art," Poems.
Page 132, note 2. Mr. Emerson once said of Gibbon, after praising his power of labor and his stately writing, that the trouble with the man was "that he had no shrine," a man's most needful possession.
Page 133, note 1.
God only knew how Saadi dined;Roses he ate, and drank the wind."Fragments on the Poet," Poems, Appendix.
FARMING
This essay, originally called "The Man with the Hoe," was the oration delivered by Mr. Emerson at the annual exhibition of the Middlesex Agricultural Society—"Cattle-show" in the vernacular—September 29, 1858. His townsman, John S. Keyes, Esquire, the sheriff of Middlesex and the president of the Society, invited him to give the address, knowing well that Mr. Emerson would present the larger and nobler view of their occupation to the farmers and gardeners of the county. For Concord, then a shire-town, was mainly agricultural, its lands still in the hands of the descendants of the early settlers. The two ministers, three doctors, six lawyers, two manufacturers, and the shop-keepers were all gardeners
