Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 16

Soothsayer of the eldest G.o.ds, Repairer of what harms betide, Revealer of the inmost powers Prometheus proffered, Jove denied; Disclosing treasures more than true, Or in what far to-morrow due; Speaking by the tongues of flowers, By the ten-tongued laurel speaking, Singing by the oriole songs, Heart of bird the man's heart seeking; Whispering hints of treasure hid Under Morn's unlifted lid, Islands looming just beyond The dim horizon's utmost bound;-- Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid, Or taunt us with our hope decayed?

Or who like thee persuade, Making the splendor of the air, The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?

Or who resent Thy genius, wiles and blandishment?

There is no orator prevails To beckon or persuade Like thee the youth or maid: Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales, Thy blooms, thy kinds, Thy echoes in the wilderness, Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress, Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.

For thou, O Spring! canst renovate All that high G.o.d did first create.

Be still his arm and architect, Rebuild the ruin, mend defect; Chemist to vamp old worlds with new, Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue, New tint the plumage of the birds, And slough decay from grazing herds, Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain, Cleanse the torrent at the fountain, Purge alpine air by towns defiled, Bring to fair mother fairer child, Not less renew the heart and brain, Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain, Make the aged eye sun-clear, To parting soul bring grandeur near.

Under gentle types, my Spring Masks the might of Nature's king, An energy that searches thorough From Chaos to the dawning morrow; Into all our human plight, The soul's pilgrimage and flight; In city or in solitude, Step by step, lifts bad to good, Without halting, without rest, Lifting Better up to Best; Planting seeds of knowledge pure, Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.

THE ADIRONDACS

A JOURNAL

DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858

Wise and polite,--and if I drew Their several portraits, you would own Chaucer had no such worthy crew, Nor Boccace in Decameron.

We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends, Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,-- Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac, With skies of benediction, to Round Lake, Where all the sacred mountains drew around us, Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead, And other t.i.tans without muse or name.

Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills.

We made our distance wider, boat from boat, As each would hear the oracle alone.

By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, Through scented banks of lilies white and gold, Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, On through the Upper Saranac, and up Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pa.s.s Winding through gra.s.sy shallows in and out, Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge, To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the sh.o.r.e.

A pause and council: then, where near the head Due east a bay makes inward to the land Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.

We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees,-- Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby, Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

'Welcome!' the wood-G.o.d murmured through the leaves,-- 'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.'

Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs, Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.

Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change.

So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways.

Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.

Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again. Happier that they Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, At the first mounting of the giant stairs.

No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, The falling rain will spoil no holiday.

We were made freemen of the forest laws, All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends, Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded: Shoes, flannel s.h.i.+rt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn: A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.

By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down: Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to trap or take him in his lair.

Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!

No city airs or arts pa.s.s current here.

Your rank is all reversed; let men or cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls: _They_ are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity.

What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?

Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.

The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb; The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, Tell the sun's time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?

All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon; Or, in the evening twilight's latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines; Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.

Hark to that m.u.f.fled roar! a tree in the woods Is fallen: but hus.h.!.+ it has not scared the buck Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Then turns to bound away,--is it too late?

Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes their wits at sally and retort, With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumored lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability,--our carbuncle, Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.

Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.

Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.

As water poured through hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn.

Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if a.s.sociates of the sylvan G.o.ds.

We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went.

We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a s.p.a.cious lodge And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter,--willing they, and more adroit.

Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,-- The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands: But, on the second day, we heed them not, Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.

For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,-- Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunters' appet.i.te and peals of mirth.

And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore, Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Aeneas, said aloud, "Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating Food indigestible":--then murmured some, Others applauded him who spoke the truth.

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday 'Mid all the hints and glories of the home.

For who can tell what sudden privacies Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let Into this Oreads' fended Paradise, As chapels in the city's thoroughfares, Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.

Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke To each apart, lifting her lovely shows To spiritual lessons pointed home, And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.

Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?

Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.

Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world!

What pictures and what harmonies are thine!

The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if 't were me?

A melancholy better than all mirth.

Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years?

Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts.

And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart.

Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of our mates returning with swift oars.

One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, Match G.o.d's equator with a zone of art, And lift man's public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed.

We have few moments in the longest life Of such delight and wonder as there grew,-- Nor yet unsuited to that solitude: A burst of joy, as if we told the fact To ears intelligent; as if gray rock And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind; As if we men were talking in a vein Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, And a prime end of the most subtle element Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!

Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well! 'tis theirs as much as ours.

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.

The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.