Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 33

The Muse's hill by Fear is guarded, A bolder foot is still rewarded.

His instant thought a poet spoke, And filled the age his fame; An inch of ground the lightning strook But lit the sky with flame.

If bright the sun, he tarries, All day his song is heard; And when he goes he carries No more baggage than a bird.

The Asmodean feat is mine, To spin my sand-heap into twine.

Slighted Minerva's learned tongue, But leaped with joy when on the wind The sh.e.l.l of Clio rung.

FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND LIFE

NATURE

The patient Pan, Drunken with nectar, Sleeps or feigns slumber, Drowsily humming Music to the march of time.

This poor tooting, creaking cricket, Pan, half asleep, rolling over His great body in the gra.s.s, Tooting, creaking, Feigns to sleep, sleeping never; 'T is his manner, Well he knows his own affair, Piling mountain chains of phlegm On the nervous brain of man, As he holds down central fires Under Alps and Andes cold; Haply else we could not live, Life would be too wild an ode.

Come search the wood for flowers,-- Wild tea and wild pea, Grapevine and succory, Coreopsis And liatris, Flaunting in their bowers; Gra.s.s with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern and agrimony; Forest full of essences Fit for fairy presences, Peppermint and sa.s.safras, Sweet fern, mint and vernal gra.s.s, Panax, black birch, sugar maple, Sweet and scent for Dian's table, Elder-blow, sarsaparilla, Wild rose, lily, dry vanilla,-- Spices in the plants that run To bring their first fruits to the sun.

Earliest heats that follow frore Nerved leaf of h.e.l.lebore, Sweet willow, checkerberry red, With its savory leaf for bread.

Silver birch and black With the selfsame spice Found in polygala root and rind, Sa.s.safras, fern, benzoine, Mouse-ear, cowslip, wintergreen, Which by aroma may compel The frost to spare, what scents so well.

Where the fungus broad and red Lifts its head, Like poisoned loaf of elfin bread, Where the aster grew With the social goldenrod, In a chapel, which the dew Made beautiful for G.o.d:-- O what would Nature say?

She spared no speech to-day: The fungus and the bulrush spoke, Answered the pine-tree and the oak, The wizard South blew down the glen, Filled the straits and filled the wide, Each maple leaf turned up its silver side.

All things s.h.i.+ne in his smoky ray, And all we see are pictures high; Many a high hillside, While oaks of pride Climb to their tops, And boys run out upon their leafy ropes.

The maple street In the houseless wood, Voices followed after, Every shrub and grape leaf Rang with fairy laughter.

I have heard them fall Like the strain of all King Oberon's minstrelsy.

Would hear the everlasting And know the only strong?

You must wors.h.i.+p fasting, You must listen long.

Words of the air Which birds of the air Carry aloft, below, around, To the isles of the deep, To the snow-capped steep, To the thundercloud.

For Nature, true and like in every place, Will hint her secret in a garden patch, Or in lone corners of a doleful heath, As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea, Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh; And, when I would recall the scenes I dreamed On Adirondac steeps, I know Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre, a.s.sured to find the token once again In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam And peaceful woods beside my cottage door.

What all the books of ages paint, I have.

What prayers and dreams of youthful genius feign, I daily dwell in, and am not so blind But I can see the elastic tent of day Belike has wider hospitality Than my few needs exhaust, and bids me read The quaint devices on its mornings gay.

Yet Nature will not be in full possessed, And they who truliest love her, heralds are And harbingers of a majestic race, Who, having more absorbed, more largely yield, And walk on earth as the sun walks in the sphere.

But never yet the man was found Who could the mystery expound, Though Adam, born when oaks were young, Endured, the Bible says, as long; But when at last the patriarch died The Gordian noose was still untied.

He left, though goodly centuries old, Meek Nature's secret still untold.

Atom from atom yawns as far As moon from earth, or star from star.

When all their blooms the meadows flaunt To deck the morning of the year, Why tinge thy l.u.s.tres jubilant With forecast or with fear?

Teach me your mood, O patient stars!

Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on s.p.a.ce no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.

The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin To use my land to put his rainbows in.

For joy and beauty planted it, With faerie gardens cheered, And boding Fancy haunted it With men and women weird.

What central flowing forces, say, Make up thy splendor, matchless day?

Day by day for her darlings to her much she added more; In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door, A door to something grander,--loftier walls, and vaster floor.

She paints with white and red the moors To draw the nations out of doors.

A score of airy miles will smooth Rough Monadnoc to a gem.