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mithridates. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

Edition used:

The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. Fireside Edition (Boston and New York, 1909).

Part of: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. (Fireside Edition).

About Liberty Fund:

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mithridates.

    • I cannot spare water or wine,
    • Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
    • From the earth-poles to the line,
    • All between that works or grows,
    • Every thing is kin of mine.
    • Give me agates for my meat;
    • Give me cantharida to eat;
    • From air and ocean bring me foods,
    • From all zones and altitudes;—
    • From all natures, sharp and slimy,
    • Salt and basalt, wild and tame;
    • Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
    • Bird, and reptile, be my game.
    • Ivy for my fillet band;
    • Blinding dog-wood in my hand;
    • Hemlock for my sherbet cull me,
    • And the prussic juice to lull me;
    • Swing me in the upas boughs,
    • Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.
    • Too long shut in strait and few,
    • Thinly dieted on dew,
    • I will use the world, and sift it,
    • To a thousand humors shift it,
    • As you spin a cherry.
    • O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry;
    • O all you virtues, methods, mights,
    • Means, appliances, delights,
    • Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,
    • Smug routine, and things allowed,
    • Minorities, things under cloud!
    • Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
    • Vein and artery, though ye kill me!