Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 6

I, that to-day am a pine, Yesterday was a bundle of gra.s.s.

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 G.o.dhead 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 pa.s.ses 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 lords.h.i.+p of the earth.'

I heard, and I obeyed,-- a.s.sured 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 Ches.h.i.+re'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 G.o.d 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, Weathergla.s.s 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 t.i.tan 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce; 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, Coa.r.s.e 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 fas.h.i.+oning 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 fas.h.i.+on Past clerks' or statesmen's art or pa.s.sion.

I can spare the college bell, And the learned lecture, well; Spare the clergy and libraries, Inst.i.tutes 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.s, 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.

Anch.o.r.ed 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.ds 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.