Chapter III: Appendix (2)

'T was one of the charmèd days When the genius of God doth flow; The wind may alter twenty ways, A tempest cannot blow; It may blow north, it still is warm; Or south, it still is clear; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm; Or west, no thunder fear. The musing peasant, lowly great, Beside the forest water sate; The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown Composed the network of his throne; The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, Was burnished to a floor of glass, Painted with shadows green and proud Of the tree and of the cloud. He was the heart of all the scene; On him the sun looked more serene; To hill and cloud his face was known,-- It seemed the likeness of their own; They knew by secret sympathy The public child of earth and sky. 'You ask,' he said, 'what guide Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide. I found the water's bed. The watercourses were my guide; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed. The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean sand. The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark; The purple berries in the wood Supplied me necessary food; For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, 'T will be time enough to die; Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field, Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover.'

WOODNOTES II

_As sunbeams stream through liberal space_ _And nothing jostle or displace,_ _So waved the pine-tree through my thought_ _And fanned the dreams it never brought._

'Whether is better, the gift or the donor? Come to me,' Quoth the pine-tree, 'I am the giver of honor. My garden is the cloven rock, And my manure the snow; And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow. He is great who can live by me: The rough and bearded forester Is better than the lord; God fills the script and canister, Sin piles the loaded board. The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant the lord that shall be; The lord is hay, the peasant grass, One dry, and one the living tree. Who liveth by the ragged pine Foundeth a heroic line; Who liveth in the palace hall Waneth fast and spendeth all. He goes to my savage haunts, With his chariot and his care; My twilight realm he disenchants, And finds his prison there.

'What prizes the town and the tower? Only what the pine-tree yields; Sinew that subdued the fields; The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods Chants his hymn to hills and floods, Whom the city's poisoning spleen Made not pale, or fat, or lean; Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth, In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, In whose feet the lion rusheth, Iron arms, and iron mould, That know not fear, fatigue, or cold. I give my rafters to his boat, My billets to his boiler's throat, And I will swim the ancient sea To float my child to victory, And grant to dwellers with the pine Dominion o'er the palm and vine. Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end. Cut a bough from my parent stem, And dip it in thy porcelain vase; A little while each russet gem Will swell and rise with wonted grace; But when it seeks enlarged supplies, The orphan of the forest dies. Whoso walks in solitude And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pass, From these companions, power and grace. Clean shall he be, without, within, From the old adhering sin, All ill dissolving in the light Of his triumphant piercing sight: Not vain, sour, nor frivolous; Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous; Grave, chaste, contented, though retired, And of all other men desired. On him the light of star and moon Shall fall with purer radiance down; All constellations of the sky Shed their virtue through his eye. Him Nature giveth for defence His formidable innocence; The mounting sap, the shells, the sea, All spheres, all stones, his helpers be; He shall meet the speeding year, Without wailing, without fear; He shall be happy in his love, Like to like shall joyful prove; He shall be happy whilst he wooes, Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse. But if with gold she bind her hair, And deck her breast with diamond, Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, Though thou lie alone on the ground.

'Heed the old oracles, Ponder my spells; Song wakes in my pinnacles When the wind swells. Soundeth the prophetic wind, The shadows shake on the rock behind, And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. Hearken! Hearken! If thou wouldst know the mystic song Chanted when the sphere was young. Aloft, abroad, the paean swells; O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells? O wise man! hear'st thou the least part? 'Tis the chronicle of art. To the open ear it sings Sweet the genesis of things, Of tendency through endless ages, Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, Of rounded worlds, of space and time, Of the old flood's subsiding slime, Of chemic matter, force and form, Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm: The rushing metamorphosis Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem, And solid nature to a dream. O, listen to the undersong, The ever old, the ever young; And, far within those cadent pauses, The chorus of the ancient Causes! Delights the dreadful Destiny To fling his voice into the tree, And shock thy weak ear with a note Breathed from the everlasting throat. In music he repeats the pang Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. O mortal! thy ears are stones; These echoes are laden with tones Which only the pure can hear; Thou canst not catch what they recite Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right, Of man to come, of human life, Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'

Once again the pine-tree sung:-- 'Speak not thy speech my boughs among: Put off thy years, wash in the breeze; My hours are peaceful centuries. Talk no more with feeble tongue; No more the fool of space and time, Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme. Only thy Americans Can read thy line, can meet thy glance, But the runes that I rehearse Understands the universe; The least breath my boughs which tossed Brings again the Pentecost; To every soul resounding clear In a voice of solemn cheer,-- "Am I not thine? Are not these thine?" And they reply, "Forever mine!" My branches speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, Mountain speech to Highlanders, Ocean tongues to islanders, To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, To each his bosom-secret say.

'Come learn with me the fatal song Which knits the world in music strong, Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, Of things with things, of times with times, Primal chimes of sun and shade, Of sound and echo, man and maid, The land reflected in the flood, Body with shadow still pursued. For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave each other know Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part, Rooted in the mighty Heart, But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed, Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed, Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded? Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded? Who thee divorced, deceived and left? Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, And torn the ensigns from thy brow, And sunk the immortal eye so low? Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender, Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender For royal man;--they thee confess An exile from the wilderness,-- The hills where health with health agrees, And the wise soul expels disease. Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign By which thy hurt thou may'st divine. When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, Or see the wide shore from thy skiff, To thee the horizon shall express But emptiness on emptiness; There lives no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth; And to thine eye the vast skies fall, Dire and satirical, On clucking hens and prating fools, On thieves, on drudges and on dolls. And thou shalt say to the Most High, "Godhead! all this astronomy, And fate and practice and invention, Strong art and beautiful pretension, This radiant pomp of sun and star, Throes that were, and worlds that are, Behold! were in vain and in vain;-- It cannot be,--I will look again. Surely now will the curtain rise, And earth's fit tenant me surprise;-- But the curtain doth _not_ rise, And Nature has miscarried wholly Into failure, into folly."

'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed Nature so to see. Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, And heal the hurts which sin has made. I see thee in the crowd alone; I will be thy companion. Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory. Behind thee leave thy merchandise, Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peacock wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: Leave all thy pedant lore apart; God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, Gives all to them who all renounce. The rain comes when the wind calls; The river knows the way to the sea; Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind; The shadow sits close to the flying ball; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; And thou,--go burn thy wormy pages,-- Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain:-- Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.

'Hearken once more! I will tell thee the mundane lore. Older am I than thy numbers wot, Change I may, but I pass not. Hitherto all things fast abide, And anchored in the tempest ride. Trenchant time behoves to hurry All to yean and all to bury: All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive. Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds. Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse, and sound, and light was none; And God said, "Throb!" and there was motion And the vast mass became vast ocean. Onward and on, the eternal Pan, Who layeth the world's incessant plan, Halteth never in one shape, But forever doth escape, Like wave or flame, into new forms Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. I, that to-day am a pine, Yesterday was a bundle of grass. He is free and libertine, Pouring of his power the wine To every age, to every race; Unto every race and age He emptieth the beverage; Unto each, and unto all, Maker and original. The world is the ring of his spells, And the play of his miracles. As he giveth to all to drink, Thus or thus they are and think. With one drop sheds form and feature; With the next a special nature; The third adds heat's indulgent spark; The fourth gives light which eats the dark; Into the fifth himself he flings, And conscious Law is King of kings. As the bee through the garden ranges, From world to world the godhead changes; As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form He maketh haste; This vault which glows immense with light Is the inn where he lodges for a night. What recks such Traveller if the bowers Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers A bunch of fragrant lilies be, Or the stars of eternity? Alike to him the better, the worse,-- The glowing angel, the outcast corse. Thou metest him by centuries, And lo! he passes like the breeze; Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, He hides in pure transparency; Thou askest in fountains and in fires, He is the essence that inquires. He is the axis of the star; He is the sparkle of the spar; He is the heart of every creature; He is the meaning of each feature; And his mind is the sky. Than all it holds more deep, more high.'

MONADNOC

Thousand minstrels woke within me, 'Our music's in the hills;'-- Gayest pictures rose to win me, Leopard-colored rills. 'Up!--If thou knew'st who calls To twilight parks of beech and pine, High over the river intervals, Above the ploughman's highest line, Over the owner's farthest walls! Up! where the airy citadel O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell! Let not unto the stones the Day Her lily and rose, her sea and land display. Read the celestial sign! Lo! the south answers to the north; Bookworm, break this sloth urbane; A greater spirit bids thee forth Than the gray dreams which thee detain. Mark how the climbing Oreads Beckon thee to their arcades; Youth, for a moment free as they, Teach thy feet to feel the ground, Ere yet arrives the wintry day When Time thy feet has bound. Take the bounty of thy birth, Taste the lordship of the earth.'

I heard, and I obeyed,-- Assured that he who made the claim, Well known, but loving not a name, Was not to be gainsaid. Ere yet the summoning voice was still, I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill. From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed Like ample banner flung abroad To all the dwellers in the plains Round about, a hundred miles, With salutation to the sea and to the bordering isles. In his own loom's garment dressed, By his proper bounty blessed, Fast abides this constant giver, Pouring many a cheerful river; To far eyes, an aerial isle Unploughed, which finer spirits pile, Which morn and crimson evening paint For bard, for lover and for saint; An eyemark and the country's core, Inspirer, prophet evermore; Pillar which God aloft had set So that men might it not forget; It should be their life's ornament, And mix itself with each event; Gauge and calendar and dial, Weatherglass and chemic phial, Garden of berries, perch of birds, Pasture of pool-haunting herds, Graced by each change of sum untold, Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.

The Titan heeds his sky-affairs, Rich rents and wide alliance shares; Mysteries of color daily laid By morn and eve in light and shade; And sweet varieties of chance, And the mystic seasons' dance; And thief-like step of liberal hours Thawing snow-drift into flowers. O, wondrous craft of plant and stone By eldest science wrought and shown!

'Happy,' I said, 'whose home is here! Fair fortunes to the mountaineer! Boon Nature to his poorest shed Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.' Intent, I searched the region round, And in low hut the dweller found: Woe is me for my hope's downfall! Is yonder squalid peasant all That this proud nursery could breed For God's vicegerency and stead? Time out of mind, this forge of ores; Quarry of spars in mountain pores; Old cradle, hunting-ground and bier Of wolf and otter, bear and deer; Well-built abode of many a race; Tower of observance searching space; Factory of river and of rain; Link in the Alps' globe-girding chain; By million changes skilled to tell What in the Eternal standeth well, And what obedient Nature can;-- Is this colossal talisman Kindly to plant and blood and kind, But speechless to the master's mind? I thought to find the patriots In whom the stock of freedom roots; To myself I oft recount Tales of many a famous mount,-- Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells: Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs and Tells; And think how Nature in these towers Uplifted shall condense her powers, And lifting man to the blue deep Where stars their perfect courses keep, Like wise preceptor, lure his eye To sound the science of the sky, And carry learning to its height Of untried power and sane delight: The Indian cheer, the frosty skies, Rear purer wits, inventive eyes,-- Eyes that frame cities where none be, And hands that stablish what these see: And by the moral of his place Hint summits of heroic grace; Man in these crags a fastness find To fight pollution of the mind; In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, Adhere like this foundation strong, The insanity of towns to stem With simpleness for stratagem. But if the brave old mould is broke, And end in churls the mountain folk In tavern cheer and tavern joke, Sink, O mountain, in the swamp! Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lamp! Perish like leaves, the highland breed No sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended muse Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse. Many hamlets sought I then, Many farms of mountain men. Rallying round a parish steeple Nestle warm the highland people, Coarse and boisterous, yet mild, Strong as giant, slow as child. Sweat and season are their arts, Their talismans are ploughs and carts; And well the youngest can command Honey from the frozen land; With cloverheads the swamp adorn, Change the running sand to corn; For wolf and fox, bring lowing herds, And for cold mosses, cream and curds: Weave wood to canisters and mats; Drain sweet maple juice in vats. No bird is safe that cuts the air From their rifle or their snare; No fish, in river or in lake, But their long hands it thence will take; Whilst the country's flinty face, Like wax, their fashioning skill betrays, To fill the hollows, sink the hills, Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills, And fit the bleak and howling waste For homes of virtue, sense and taste. The World-soul knows his own affair, Forelooking, when he would prepare For the next ages, men of mould Well embodied, well ensouled, He cools the present's fiery glow, Sets the life-pulse strong but slow: Bitter winds and fasts austere His quarantines and grottoes, where He slowly cures decrepit flesh, And brings it infantile and fresh. Toil and tempest are the toys And games to breathe his stalwart boys: They bide their time, and well can prove, If need were, their line from Jove; Of the same stuff, and so allayed, As that whereof the sun is made, And of the fibre, quick and strong, Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.

Now in sordid weeds they sleep, In dulness now their secret keep; Yet, will you learn our ancient speech, These the masters who can teach. Fourscore or a hundred words All their vocal muse affords; But they turn them in a fashion Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion. I can spare the college bell, And the learned lecture, well; Spare the clergy and libraries, Institutes and dictionaries, For that hardy English root Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot. Rude poets of the tavern hearth, Squandering your unquoted mirth, Which keeps the ground and never soars, While Jake retorts and Reuben roars; Scoff of yeoman strong and stark, Goes like bullet to its mark; While the solid curse and jeer Never balk the waiting ear.

On the summit as I stood, O'er the floor of plain and flood Seemed to me, the towering hill Was not altogether still, But a quiet sense conveyed: If I err not, thus it said:--

'Many feet in summer seek, Oft, my far-appearing peak; In the dreaded winter time, None save dappling shadows climb, Under clouds, my lonely head, Old as the sun, old almost as the shade; And comest thou To see strange forests and new snow, And tread uplifted land? And leavest thou thy lowland race, Here amid clouds to stand? And wouldst be my companion Where I gaze, and still shall gaze, Through tempering nights and flashing days, When forests fall, and man is gone, Over tribes and over times, At the burning Lyre, Nearing me, With its stars of northern fire, In many a thousand years?

'Gentle pilgrim, if thou know The gamut old of Pan, And how the hills began, The frank blessings of the hill Fall on thee, as fall they will.

'Let him heed who can and will; Enchantment fixed me here To stand the hurts of time, until In mightier chant I disappear. If thou trowest How the chemic eddies play, Pole to pole, and what they say; And that these gray crags Not on crags are hung, But beads are of a rosary On prayer and music strung; And, credulous, through the granite seeming, Seest the smile of Reason beaming;-- Can thy style-discerning eye The hidden-working Builder spy, Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, With hammer soft as snowflake's flight;-- Knowest thou this? O pilgrim, wandering not amiss! Already my rocks lie light, And soon my cone will spin.

'For the world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them and the moon. Orb and atom forth they prance, When they hear from far the rune; None so backward in the troop, When the music and the dance Reach his place and circumstance, But knows the sun-creating sound, And, though a pyramid, will bound.

'Monadnoc is a mountain strong, Tall and good my kind among; But well I know, no mountain can, Zion or Meru, measure with man. For it is on zodiacs writ, Adamant is soft to wit: And when the greater comes again With my secret in his brain, I shall pass, as glides my shadow Daily over hill and meadow.

'Through all time, in light, in gloom Well I hear the approaching feet On the flinty pathway beat Of him that cometh, and shall come; Of him who shall as lightly bear My daily load of woods and streams, As doth this round sky-cleaving boat Which never strains its rocky beams; Whose timbers, as they silent float, Alps and Caucasus uprear, And the long Alleghanies here, And all town-sprinkled lands that be, Sailing through stars with all their history.

'Every morn I lift my head, See New England underspread, South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound, From Katskill east to the sea-bound. Anchored fast for many an age, I await the bard and sage, Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, Shall string Monadnoc like a bead. Comes that cheerful troubadour, This mound shall throb his face before, As when, with inward fires and pain, It rose a bubble from the plain. When he cometh, I shall shed, From this wellspring in my head, Fountain-drop of spicier worth Than all vintage of the earth. There's fruit upon my barren soil Costlier far than wine or oil. There's a berry blue and gold,-- Autumn-ripe, its juices hold Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, Asia's rancor, Athens' art, Slowsure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight. I will give my son to eat Best of Pan's immortal meat, Bread to eat, and juice to drain; So the coinage of his brain Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars, He comes, but not of that race bred Who daily climb my specular head. Oft as morning wreathes my scarf, Fled the last plumule of the Dark, Pants up hither the spruce clerk From South Cove and City Wharf. I take him up my rugged sides, Half-repentant, scant of breath,-- Bead-eyes my granite chaos show, And my midsummer snow: Open the daunting map beneath,-- All his county, sea and land, Dwarfed to measure of his hand; His day's ride is a furlong space, His city-tops a glimmering haze. I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding; "See there the grim gray rounding Of the bullet of the earth Whereon ye sail, Tumbling steep In the uncontinented deep." He looks on that, and he turns pale. 'T is even so, this treacherous kite, Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere, Thoughtless of its anxious freight, Plunges eyeless on forever; And he, poor parasite, Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,-- Who is the captain he knows not, Port or pilot trows not,-- Risk or ruin he must share. I scowl on him with my cloud, With my north wind chill his blood; I lame him, clattering down the rocks; And to live he is in fear. Then, at last, I let him down Once more into his dapper town, To chatter, frightened, to his clan And forget me if he can.'

As in the old poetic fame The gods are blind and lame, And the simular despite Betrays the more abounding might, So call not waste that barren cone Above the floral zone, Where forests starve: It is pure use;-- What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

Ages are thy days, Thou grand affirmer of the present tense, And type of permanence! Firm ensign of the fatal Being, Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief, That will not bide the seeing!

Hither we bring Our insect miseries to thy rocks; And the whole flight, with folded wing, Vanish, and end their murmuring,-- Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, Which who can tell what mason laid? Spoils of a front none need restore, Replacing frieze and architrave;-- Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave; Still is the haughty pile erect Of the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind, Holding us at vantage still, Our sumptuous indigence, O barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense; Shedding on all its snows and leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, O watchman tall, Our towns and races grow and fall, And imagest the stable good For which we all our lifetime grope, In shifting form the formless mind, And though the substance us elude, We in thee the shadow find. Thou, in our astronomy An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,-- By circumspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous,-- Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succor and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth.

FABLE

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter 'Little Prig; Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.'

ODE

INSCRIBED TO W.H. CHANNING

Though loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry Muse Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, Of better arts and life? Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famous States Harrying Mexico With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! And in thy valleys, Agiochook! The jackals of the negro-holder.

The God who made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land With little men;-- Small bat and wren House in the oak:-- If earth-fire cleave The upheaved land, and bury the folk, The southern crocodile would grieve. Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin-lid.

What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? Wherefore? to what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill Would serve things still;-- Things are of the snake.

The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,-- Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking.

'T is fit the forest fall, The steep be graded, The mountain tunnelled, The sand shaded, The orchard planted, The glebe tilled, The prairie granted, The steamer built.

Let man serve law for man; Live for friendship, live for love, For truth's and harmony's behoof; The state may follow how it can, As Olympus follows Jove.

Yet do not I implore The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, Nor bid the unwilling senator Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. Every one to his chosen work;-- Foolish hands may mix and mar; Wise and sure the issues are. Round they roll till dark is light, Sex to sex, and even to odd;-- The over-god Who marries Right to Might, Who peoples, unpeoples,-- He who exterminates Races by stronger races, Black by white faces,-- Knows to bring honey Out of the lion; Grafts gentlest scion On pirate and Turk.

The Cossack eats Poland, Like stolen fruit; Her last noble is ruined, Her last poet mute: Straight, into double band The victors divide; Half for freedom strike and stand;-- The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

ASTRAEA

Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate; Each to all is venerable, Cap-a-pie invulnerable, Until he write, where all eyes rest, Slave or master on his breast. I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck, 'Judgment and a judge we seek.' Not to monarchs they repair, Nor to learned jurist's chair; But they hurry to their peers, To their kinsfolk and their dears; Louder than with speech they pray,-- 'What am I? companion, say.' And the friend not hesitates To assign just place and mates; Answers not in word or letter, Yet is understood the better; Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects his figure that doth pass. Every wayfarer he meets What himself declared repeats, What himself confessed records, Sentences him in his words; The form is his own corporal form, And his thought the penal worm. Yet shine forever virgin minds, Loved by stars and purest winds, Which, o'er passion throned sedate, Have not hazarded their state; Disconcert the searching spy, Rendering to a curious eye The durance of a granite ledge. To those who gaze from the sea's edge It is there for benefit; It is there for purging light; There for purifying storms; And its depths reflect all forms; It cannot parley with the mean,-- Pure by impure is not seen. For there's no sequestered grot, Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot, But Justice, journeying in the sphere, Daily stoops to harbor there.

ÉTIENNE DE LA BOÉCE

I serve you not, if you I follow, Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow; And bend my fancy to your leading, All too nimble for my treading. When the pilgrimage is done, And we've the landscape overrun, I am bitter, vacant, thwarted, And your heart is unsupported. Vainly valiant, you have missed The manhood that should yours resist,-- Its complement; but if I could, In severe or cordial mood, Lead you rightly to my altar, Where the wisest Muses falter, And worship that world-warming spark Which dazzles me in midnight dark, Equalizing small and large, While the soul it doth surcharge, Till the poor is wealthy grown, And the hermit never alone,-- The traveller and the road seem one With the errand to be done,-- That were a man's and lover's part, That were Freedom's whitest chart.

COMPENSATION

Why should I keep holiday
When other men have none?
Why but because, when these are gay,
I sit and mourn alone?

And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
Should mine alone be dumb?
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
And now their hour is come.

FORBEARANCE

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

THE PARK

The prosperous and beautiful
To me seem not to wear
The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me everywhere.

I cannot shake off the god;
On my neck he makes his seat;
I look at my face in the glass,--
My eyes his eyeballs meet.

Enchanters! Enchantresses!
Your gold makes you seem wise;
The morning mist within your grounds
More proudly rolls, more softly lies.

Yet spake yon purple mountain,
Yet said yon ancient wood,
That Night or Day, that Love or Crime,
Leads all souls to the Good.

FORERUNNERS

Long I followed happy guides, I could never reach their sides; Their step is forth, and, ere the day Breaks up their leaguer, and away. Keen my sense, my heart was young, Right good-will my sinews strung, But no speed of mine avails To hunt upon their shining trails. On and away, their hasting feet Make the morning proud and sweet; Flowers they strew,--I catch the scent; Or tone of silver instrument Leaves on the wind melodious trace; Yet I could never see their face. On eastern hills I see their smokes, Mixed with mist by distant lochs. I met many travellers Who the road had surely kept; They saw not my fine revellers,-- These had crossed them while they slept. Some had heard their fair report, In the country or the court. Fleetest couriers alive Never yet could once arrive, As they went or they returned, At the house where these sojourned. Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, Though they are not overtaken; In sleep their jubilant troop is near,-- I tuneful voices overhear; It may be in wood or waste,-- At unawares 't is come and past. Their near camp my spirit knows By signs gracious as rainbows. I thenceforward and long after Listen for their harp-like laughter, And carry in my heart, for days, Peace that hallows rudest ways.

SURSUM CORDA

Seek not the spirit, if it hide Inexorable to thy zeal: Trembler, do not whine and chide: Art thou not also real? Stoop not then to poor excuse; Turn on the accuser roundly; say, 'Here am I, here will I abide Forever to myself soothfast; Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay!' Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, For only it can absolutely deal.

ODE TO BEAUTY

Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,-- Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old? Or what was the service For which I was sold? When first my eyes saw thee, I found me thy thrall, By magical drawings, Sweet tyrant of all! I drank at thy fountain False waters of thirst; Thou intimate stranger, Thou latest and first! Thy dangerous glances Make women of men; New-born, we are melting Into nature again.

Lavish, lavish promiser, Nigh persuading gods to err! Guest of million painted forms, Which in turn thy glory warms! The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, The swinging spider's silver line, The ruby of the drop of wine, The shining pebble of the pond, Thou inscribest with a bond, In thy momentary play, Would bankrupt nature to repay.

Ah, what avails it To hide or to shun Whom the Infinite One Hath granted his throne? The heaven high over Is the deep's lover; The sun and sea, Informed by thee, Before me run And draw me on, Yet fly me still, As Fate refuses To me the heart Fate for me chooses. Is it that my opulent soul Was mingled from the generous whole; Sea-valleys and the deep of skies Furnished several supplies; And the sands whereof I'm made Draw me to them, self-betrayed?

I turn the proud portfolio Which holds the grand designs Of Salvator, of Guercino, And Piranesi's lines. I hear the lofty paeans Of the masters of the shell, Who heard the starry music And recount the numbers well; Olympian bards who sung Divine Ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so. Oft, in streets or humblest places, I detect far-wandered graces, Which, from Eden wide astray, In lowly homes have lost their way.

Thee gliding through the sea of form, Like the lightning through the storm, Somewhat not to be possessed, Somewhat not to be caressed, No feet so fleet could ever find, No perfect form could ever bind. Thou eternal fugitive, Hovering over all that live, Quick and skilful to inspire Sweet, extravagant desire, Starry space and lily-bell Filling with thy roseate smell, Wilt not give the lips to taste Of the nectar which thou hast.

All that's good and great with thee Works in close conspiracy; Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely To report thy features only, And the cold and purple morning Itself with thoughts of thee adorning; The leafy dell, the city mart, Equal trophies of thine art; E'en the flowing azure air Thou hast touched for my despair; And, if I languish into dreams, Again I meet the ardent beams. Queen of things! I dare not die In Being's deeps past ear and eye; Lest there I find the same deceiver And be the sport of Fate forever. Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be, Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me!

GIVE ALL TO LOVE

Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit and the Muse,-- Nothing refuse.

'T is a brave master; Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, Hope beyond hope: High and more high It dives into noon, With wing unspent, Untold intent; But it is a god, Knows its own path And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean; It requireth courage stout. Souls above doubt, Valor unbending, It will reward,-- They shall return More than they were, And ever ascending.

Leave all for love; Yet, hear me, yet, One word more thy heart behoved, One pulse more of firm endeavor,-- Keep thee to-day, To-morrow, forever, Free as an Arab Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go. The gods arrive.

TO ELLEN AT THE SOUTH

The green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.

'T is a tune of the Spring;
Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
And to the pausing lover.

O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
Goes light the nimble zephyr;
The Flowers--tiny sect of Shakers--
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest,--
Saying, 'We have dressed for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.

'O hasten;' 't is our time,
Ere yet the red Summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee,--the tawny hummer.

'O pride of thy race!
Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,
We poor New England flowers.

'Fairest, choose the fairest members
Of our lithe society;
June's glories and September's
Show our love and piety.

'Thou shalt command us all,--
April's cowslip, summer's clover,
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

'O come, then, quickly come!
We are budding, we are blowing;
And the wind that we perfume
Sings a tune that's worth the knowing.'

TO ELLEN

And Ellen, when the graybeard years
Have brought us to life's evening hour,
And all the crowded Past appears
A tiny scene of sun and shower,

Then, if I read the page aright
Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot,
Thyself shalt own the page was bright,
Well that we loved, woe had we not,

When Mirth is dumb and Flattery's fled,
And mute thy music's dearest tone,
When all but Love itself is dead
And all but deathless Reason gone.

TO EVA

O fair and stately maid, whose eyes Were kindled in the upper skies At the same torch that lighted mine; For so I must interpret still Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, A sympathy divine.

Ah! let me blameless gaze upon Features that seem at heart my own; Nor fear those watchful sentinels, Who charm the more their glance forbids, Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids, With fire that draws while it repels.

LINES

WRITTEN BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER SHORTLY BEFORE HER MARRIAGE TO MR. EMERSON

Love scatters oil
On Life's dark sea,
Sweetens its toil--
Our helmsman he.

Around him hover
Odorous clouds;
Under this cover
His arrows he shrouds.

The cloud was around me,
I knew not why
Such sweetness crowned me.
While Time shot by.

No pain was within,
But calm delight,
Like a world without sin,
Or a day without night.

The shafts of the god
Were tipped with down,
For they drew no blood,
And they knit no frown.

I knew of them not
Until Cupid laughed loud,
And saying "You're caught!"
Flew off in the cloud.

O then I awoke,
And I lived but to sigh,
Till a clear voice spoke,--
And my tears are dry.

THE VIOLET

BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER

Why lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year; Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear; Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow, Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow?

Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray? Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day. The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on; There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone.

O Violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and die, When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes sigh; When Winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting Spring, And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing.

I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet; Her morning sun shone bright and calmly purely set; When the violets were in their shrouds, and Summer in its pride, She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died.

THE AMULET

Your picture smiles as first it smiled;
The ring you gave is still the same;
Your letter tells, O changing child!
No tidings _since_ it came.

Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you,--
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.

Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.

THINE EYES STILL SHINED

Thine eyes still shined for me, though far
I lonely roved the land or sea:
As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.

This morn I climbed the misty hill
And roamed the pastures through;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew!

When the redbird spread his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.

EROS

The sense of the world is short,-- Long and various the report,-- To love and be beloved; Men and gods have not outlearned it; And, how oft soe'er they've turned it, Not to be improved.

HERMIONE

On a mound an Arab lay, And sung his sweet regrets And told his amulets: The summer bird His sorrow heard, And, when he heaved a sigh profound, The sympathetic swallow swept the ground.

'If it be, as they said, she was not fair, Beauty's not beautiful to me, But sceptred genius, aye inorbed, Culminating in her sphere. This Hermione absorbed The lustre of the land and ocean, Hills and islands, cloud and tree, In her form and motion.

'I ask no bauble miniature, Nor ringlets dead Shorn from her comely head, Now that morning not disdains Mountains and the misty plains Her colossal portraiture; They her heralds be, Steeped in her quality, And singers of her fame Who is their Muse and dame.

'Higher, dear swallows! mind not what I say. Ah! heedless how the weak are strong, Say, was it just, In thee to frame, in me to trust, Thou to the Syrian couldst belong?

'I am of a lineage That each for each doth fast engage; In old Bassora's schools, I seemed Hermit vowed to books and gloom,-- Ill-bestead for gay bridegroom. I was by thy touch redeemed; When thy meteor glances came, We talked at large of worldly fate, And drew truly every trait.

'Once I dwelt apart, Now I live with all; As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side Seems, by the traveller espied, A door into the mountain heart, So didst thou quarry and unlock Highways for me through the rock.

'Now, deceived, thou wanderest In strange lands unblest; And my kindred come to soothe me. Southwind is my next of blood; He is come through fragrant wood, Drugged with spice from climates warm, And in every twinkling glade, And twilight nook, Unveils thy form. Out of the forest way Forth paced it yesterday; And when I sat by the watercourse, Watching the daylight fade, It throbbed up from the brook.

'River and rose and crag and bird, Frost and sun and eldest night, To me their aid preferred, To me their comfort plight;-- "Courage! we are thine allies, And with this hint be wise,-- The chains of kind The distant bind; Deed thou doest she must do, Above her will, be true; And, in her strict resort To winds and waterfalls And autumn's sunlit festivals, To music, and to music's thought, Inextricably bound, She shall find thee, and be found. Follow not her flying feet; Come to us herself to meet."'

INITIAL, DAEMONIC AND CELESTIAL LOVE