Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;-
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]

BRAHMA

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

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished 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!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]

BACCHUS

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through

Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffered no savor of the earth to 'scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root,

Which feels the acrid juice

Of Styx and Erebus;

And turns the woe of Night,

By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

We buy ashes for bread;

We buy diluted wine;

Give me of the true,

Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled

Among the silver hills of heaven

Draw everlasting dew;

Wine of wine,

Blood of the world,

Form of forms, and mold of statures,

That I intoxicated,

And by the draught assimilated,

May float at pleasure through all natures;

The bird-language rightly spell,

And that which roses say so well.

Wine that is shed

Like the torrents of the sun

Up the horizon walls,

Or like the Atlantic streams,

which run

When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread,

Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,

Wine which is already man,

Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which Music is,

Music and wine are one,

That I, drinking this,

Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;

Kings unborn shall walk with me,

And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.

Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!
Vine for vine be antidote,

And the grape requite the lote!
Haste to cure the old despair;—
Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;
Give them again to shine;
Let wine repair what this undid;

And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;

Refresh the faded tints,

Recut the agèd prints,

And write my old adventures with the pen

Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]

THE PROBLEM

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,—
The canticles of love and woe:

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone,
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise,—
The Book itself before me lies,—
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowlèd portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]

EVENING HYMN

SLOWLY by God's hand unfurled,
Down around the weary world
Falls the darkness; oh, how still
Is the working of Thy will!

Mighty Maker! Here am I,-
Work in me as silently,