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 gods 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 expresser 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 pestering 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;-

Yet flowers each stone rosette and metrope brave;
Still is the haughty pile erect

Of the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind,
Having 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 shifting form the formless mind,
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou, in our astronomy

An opaquer 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 circumspect 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 supply

The shortness of our days,

And promise, on thy Founder's truth,

Long morrow to this mortal youth.

POEMS OF EMERSON

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;

469

Everything

nasits
over pur

он

pose

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut."

THE SNOW-STORM

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

alus afite of, not with POEMS OF EMERSON anding.

470

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Emerson's
BRAHMA- God

Godis

Ir the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways omni
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;

present

Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanquished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;

But thou, meek lover of the good!

is every

where

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

THE SPHINX

THE Sphinx is drowsy,

Her wings are furled;

Her ear is heavy,

She broods on the world.

"Who'll tell me my secret,

The ages have kept?

I waited the seer,

While they slumbered and slept;

"The fate of the man-child;

The meaning of man;

Known fruit of the unknown;

Daedalian plan; exceful, intricate

Out of sleeping a waking,

Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm;

In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings: Kind leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings.

"The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,

Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;

The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,

Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,-
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;

Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.