Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 26

I

A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings; The eye reads omens where it goes, And speaks all languages the rose; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

II

The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin; Self-kindled every atom glows And hints the future which it owes.

THE INFORMING SPIRIT

I

There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all: And where it cometh, all things are; And it cometh everywhere.

II

I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.

CIRCLES

Nature centres into b.a.l.l.s, And her proud ephemerals, Fast to surface and outside, Scan the profile of the sphere; Knew they what that signified, A new genesis were here.

INTELLECT

Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their s.h.i.+ning goals;-- The sower scatters broad his seed; The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

GIFTS

Gifts of one who loved me,-- 'T was high time they came; When he ceased to love me, Time they stopped for shame.

PROMISE

In countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; In thousand far-transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives; So, in the new-born millions, The perfect Adam lives.

Not less are summer mornings dear To every child they wake, And each with novel life his sphere Fills for his proper sake.

CARITAS

In the suburb, in the town, On the railway, in the square, Came a beam of goodness down Doubling daylight everywhere: Peace now each for malice takes, Beauty for his sinful weeds, For the angel Hope aye makes Him an angel whom she leads.

POWER

His tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill; His face was the mould of beauty, And his heart the throne of will.

WEALTH

Who shall tell what did befall, Far away in time, when once, Over the lifeless ball, Hung idle stars and suns?

What G.o.d the element obeyed?

Wings of what wind the lichen bore, Wafting the puny seeds of power, Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade?

And well the primal pioneer Knew the strong task to it a.s.signed, Patient through Heaven's enormous year To build in matter home for mind.

From air the creeping centuries drew The matted thicket low and wide, This must the leaves of ages strew The granite slab to clothe and hide, Ere wheat can wave its golden pride.

What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled (In dizzy aeons dim and mute The reeling brain can ill compute) Copper and iron, lead and gold?

What oldest star the fame can save Of races peris.h.i.+ng to pave The planet with a floor of lime?

Dust is their pyramid and mole: Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed Under the tumbling mountain's breast, In the safe herbal of the coal?

But when the quarried means were piled, All is waste and worthless, till Arrives the wise selecting will, And, out of slime and chaos, Wit Draws the threads of fair and fit.

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, The shop of toil, the hall of arts; Then flew the sail across the seas To feed the North from tropic trees; The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, Where they were bid, the rivers ran; New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.

Then docks were built, and crops were stored, And ingots added to the h.o.a.rd.

But though light-headed man forget, Remembering Matter pays her debt: Still, through her motes and ma.s.ses, draw Electric thrills and ties of law, Which bind the strengths of Nature wild To the conscience of a child.

ILLUSIONS

Flow, flow the waves hated, Accursed, adored, The waves of mutation; No anchorage is.

Sleep is not, death is not; Who seem to die live.

House you were born in, Friends of your spring-time, Old man and young maid, Day's toil and its guerdon, They are all vanis.h.i.+ng, Fleeing to fables, Cannot be moored.

See the stars through them, Through treacherous marbles.

Know the stars yonder, The stars everlasting, Are fugitive also, And emulate, vaulted, The lambent heat lightning And fire-fly's flight.

When thou dost return On the wave's circulation, Behold the s.h.i.+mmer, The wild dissipation, And, out of endeavor To change and to flow, The gas become solid, And phantoms and nothings Return to be things, And endless imbroglio Is law and the world,-- Then first shalt thou know, That in the wild turmoil, Horsed on the Proteus, Thou ridest to power, And to endurance.

IV

QUATRAINS AND TRANSLATIONS