Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 11

'Deep, deep are loving eyes, Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet; And the point is paradise, Where their glances meet: Their reach shall yet be more profound, And a vision without bound: The axis of those eyes sun-clear Be the axis of the sphere: So shall the lights ye pour amain Go, without check or intervals, Through from the empyrean walls Unto the same again.'

Higher far into the pure realm, Over sun and star, Over the flickering Daemon film, Thou must mount for love; Into vision where all form In one only form dissolves; In a region where the wheel On which all beings ride Visibly revolves; Where the starred, eternal worm Girds the world with bound and term; Where unlike things are like; Where good and ill, And joy and moan, Melt into one.

There Past, Present, Future, shoot Triple blossoms from one root; Substances at base divided, In their summits are united; There the holy essence rolls, One through separated souls; And the sunny Aeon sleeps Folding Nature in its deeps, And every fair and every good, Known in part, or known impure, To men below, In their archetypes endure.

The race of G.o.ds, Or those we erring own, Are shadows flitting up and down In the still abodes.

The circles of that sea are laws Which publish and which hide the cause.

Pray for a beam Out of that sphere, Thee to guide and to redeem.

O, what a load Of care and toil, By lying use bestowed, From his shoulders falls who sees The true astronomy, The period of peace.

Counsel which the ages kept Shall the well-born soul accept.

As the overhanging trees Fill the lake with images,-- As garment draws the garment's hem, Men their fortunes bring with them.

By right or wrong, Lands and goods go to the strong.

Property will brutely draw Still to the proprietor; Silver to silver creep and wind, And kind to kind.

Nor less the eternal poles Of tendency distribute souls.

There need no vows to bind Whom not each other seek, but find.

They give and take no pledge or oath,-- Nature is the bond of both: No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,-- Their n.o.ble meanings are their p.a.w.ns.

Plain and cold is their address, Power have they for tenderness; And, so thoroughly is known Each other's counsel by his own, They can parley without meeting; Need is none of forms of greeting; They can well communicate In their innermost estate; When each the other shall avoid, Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves Do these celebrate their loves: Not by jewels, feasts and savors, Not by ribbons or by favors, But by the sun-spark on the sea, And the cloud-shadow on the lea, The soothing lapse of morn to mirk, And the cheerful round of work.

Their cords of love so public are, They intertwine the farthest star: The throbbing sea, the quaking earth, Yield sympathy and signs of mirth; Is none so high, so mean is none, But feels and seals this union; Even the fell Furies are appeased, The good applaud, the lost are eased.

Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, Bound for the just, but not beyond; Not glad, as the low-loving herd, Of self in other still preferred, But they have heartily designed The benefit of broad mankind.

And they serve men austerely, After their own genius, clearly, Without a false humility; For this is Love's n.o.bility,-- Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold; But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand and body and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good.

He that feeds men serveth few; He serves all who dares be true.

THE APOLOGY

Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the G.o.d of the wood To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery But 'tis figured in the flowers; Was never secret history But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song.

MERLIN I

Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Free, peremptory, clear.

No jingling serenader's art, Nor tinkle of piano strings, Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs.

The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Secrets of the solar track, Sparks of the supersolar blaze.

Merlin's blows are strokes of fate, Chiming with the forest tone, When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; Chiming with the gasp and moan Of the ice-imprisoned flood; With the pulse of manly hearts; With the voice of orators; With the din of city arts; With the cannonade of wars; With the marches of the brave; And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.

Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard.

He shall not his brain enc.u.mber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme.

'Pa.s.s in, pa.s.s in,' the angels say, 'In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.'

Blameless master of the games, King of sport that never shames, He shall daily joy dispense Hid in song's sweet influence.

Forms more cheerly live and go, What time the subtle mind Sings aloud the tune whereto Their pulses beat, And march their feet, And their members are combined.

By Sybarites beguiled, He shall no task decline; Merlin's mighty line Extremes of nature reconciled,-- Bereaved a tyrant of his will, And made the lion mild.

Songs can the tempest still, Scattered on the stormy air, Mould the year to fair increase, And bring in poetic peace.

He shall not seek to weave, In weak, unhappy times, Efficacious rhymes; Wait his returning strength.

Bird that from the nadir's floor To the zenith's top can soar,-- The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length.

Nor profane affect to hit Or compa.s.s that, by meddling wit, Which only the propitious mind Publishes when 't is inclined.

There are open hours When the G.o.d's will sallies free, And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;-- Sudden, at unawares, Self-moved, fly-to the doors.

Nor sword of angels could reveal What they conceal.

MERLIN II

The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs; Balance-loving Nature Made all things in pairs.

To every foot its antipode; Each color with its counter glowed; To every tone beat answering tones, Higher or graver; Flavor gladly blends with flavor; Leaf answers leaf upon the bough; And match the paired cotyledons.

Hands to hands, and feet to feet, In one body grooms and brides; Eldest rite, two married sides In every mortal meet.

Light's far furnace s.h.i.+nes, Smelting b.a.l.l.s and bars, Forging double stars, Glittering twins and trines.

The animals are sick with love, Lovesick with rhyme; Each with all propitious Time Into chorus wove.

Like the dancers' ordered band, Thoughts come also hand in hand; In equal couples mated, Or else alternated; Adding by their mutual gage, One to other, health and age.

Solitary fancies go Short-lived wandering to and fro, Most like to bachelors, Or an ungiven maid, Not ancestors, With no posterity to make the lie afraid, Or keep truth undecayed.

Perfect-paired as eagle's wings, Justice is the rhyme of things; Trade and counting use The self-same tuneful muse; And Nemesis, Who with even matches odd, Who athwart s.p.a.ce redresses The partial wrong, Fills the just period, And finishes the song.

Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, Murmur in the house of life, Sung by the Sisters as they spin; In perfect time and measure they Build and unbuild our echoing clay.

As the two twilights of the day Fold us music-drunken in.

BACCHUS

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew In the belly of the grape, Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through, Under the Andes to the Cape, Suffer no savor of the earth to scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

We buy ashes for bread; We buy diluted wine; Give me of the true,-- Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled Among the silver hills of heaven Draw everlasting dew; Wine of wine, Blood of the world, Form of forms, and mould of statures, That I intoxicated, And by the draught a.s.similated, May float at pleasure through all natures; The bird-language rightly spell, And that which roses say so well.

Wine that is shed Like the torrents of the sun Up the horizon walls, Or like the Atlantic streams, which run When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread, Food which needs no trans.m.u.ting, Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting, Wine which is already man, Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which Music is,-- Music and wine are one,-- That I, drinking this, Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; Kings unborn shall walk with me; And the poor gra.s.s shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock Every crypt of every rock.