Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 7

Complement of human kind, Holding us at vantage still, Our sumptuous indigence, O barren mound, thy plenties fill!

We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate.

To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense; Shedding on all its snows and leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.

Thou seest, O watchman tall, Our towns and races grow and fall, And imagest the stable good For which we all our lifetime grope, In s.h.i.+fting form the formless mind, And though the substance us elude, We in thee the shadow find.

Thou, in our astronomy An opaker star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,-- By circ.u.mspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous,-- Recallest us, And makest sane.

Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succor and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth.

FABLE

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter 'Little Prig; Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.'

ODE

INSCRIBED TO W.H. CHANNING

Though loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry Muse Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, Of better arts and life?

Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famous States Harrying Mexico With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?

I found by thee, O rus.h.i.+ng Contoocook!

And in thy valleys, Agiochook!

The jackals of the negro-holder.

The G.o.d who made New Hamps.h.i.+re Taunted the lofty land With little men;-- Small bat and wren House in the oak:-- If earth-fire cleave The upheaved land, and bury the folk, The southern crocodile would grieve.

Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin-lid.

What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, That would indignant rend The northland from the south?

Wherefore? to what good end?

Boston Bay and Bunker Hill Would serve things still;-- Things are of the snake.

The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,-- Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking.

'T is fit the forest fall, The steep be graded, The mountain tunnelled, The sand shaded, The orchard planted, The glebe tilled, The prairie granted, The steamer built.

Let man serve law for man; Live for friends.h.i.+p, live for love, For truth's and harmony's behoof; The state may follow how it can, As Olympus follows Jove.

Yet do not I implore The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, Nor bid the unwilling senator Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.

Every one to his chosen work;-- Foolish hands may mix and mar; Wise and sure the issues are.

Round they roll till dark is light, s.e.x to s.e.x, and even to odd;-- The over-G.o.d Who marries Right to Might, Who peoples, unpeoples,-- He who exterminates Races by stronger races, Black by white faces,-- Knows to bring honey Out of the lion; Grafts gentlest scion On pirate and Turk.

The Cossack eats Poland, Like stolen fruit; Her last n.o.ble is ruined, Her last poet mute: Straight, into double band The victors divide; Half for freedom strike and stand;-- The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

ASTRAEA

Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat.

There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate; Each to all is venerable, Cap-a-pie invulnerable, Until he write, where all eyes rest, Slave or master on his breast.

I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck, 'Judgment and a judge we seek.'

Not to monarchs they repair, Nor to learned jurist's chair; But they hurry to their peers, To their kinsfolk and their dears; Louder than with speech they pray,-- 'What am I? companion, say.'

And the friend not hesitates To a.s.sign just place and mates; Answers not in word or letter, Yet is understood the better; Each to each a looking-gla.s.s, Reflects his figure that doth pa.s.s.

Every wayfarer he meets What himself declared repeats, What himself confessed records, Sentences him in his words; The form is his own corporal form, And his thought the penal worm.

Yet s.h.i.+ne forever virgin minds, Loved by stars and purest winds, Which, o'er pa.s.sion throned sedate, Have not hazarded their state; Disconcert the searching spy, Rendering to a curious eye The durance of a granite ledge.

To those who gaze from the sea's edge It is there for benefit; It is there for purging light; There for purifying storms; And its depths reflect all forms; It cannot parley with the mean,-- Pure by impure is not seen.

For there's no sequestered grot, Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot, But Justice, journeying in the sphere, Daily stoops to harbor there.

eTIENNE DE LA BOeCE

I serve you not, if you I follow, Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow; And bend my fancy to your leading, All too nimble for my treading.

When the pilgrimage is done, And we've the landscape overrun, I am bitter, vacant, thwarted, And your heart is unsupported.

Vainly valiant, you have missed The manhood that should yours resist,-- Its complement; but if I could, In severe or cordial mood, Lead you rightly to my altar, Where the wisest Muses falter, And wors.h.i.+p that world-warming spark Which dazzles me in midnight dark, Equalizing small and large, While the soul it doth surcharge, Till the poor is wealthy grown, And the hermit never alone,-- The traveller and the road seem one With the errand to be done,-- That were a man's and lover's part, That were Freedom's whitest chart.

COMPENSATION

Why should I keep holiday When other men have none?

Why but because, when these are gay, I sit and mourn alone?

And why, when mirth unseals all tongues, Should mine alone be dumb?

Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs, And now their hour is come.

FORBEARANCE

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?

Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?

At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?

And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, n.o.bility more n.o.bly to repay?

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!