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nature.

i.

- Winters know
- Easily to shed the snow,
- And the untaught Spring is wise
- In cowslips and anemonies.
- Nature, hating art and pains,
- Baulks and baffles plotting brains;
- Casualty and Surprise
- Are the apples of her eyes;
- But she dearly loves the poor,
- And, by marvel of her own,
- Strikes the loud pretender down.
- For Nature listens in the rose
- And hearkens in the berry's bell
- To help her friends, to plague her foes,
- And like wise God she judges well.
- Yet doth much her love excel
- To the souls that never fell,
- To swains that live in happiness
- And do well because they please,
- Who walk in ways that are unfamed,
- And feats achieve before they're named.

nature.

ii.

- She is gamesome and good,
- But of mutable mood,—
- No dreary repeater now and again,
- She will be all things to all men.
- She who is old, but nowise feeble,
- Pours her power into the people,
- Merry and manifold without bar,
- Makes and moulds them what they are,
- And what they call their city way
- Is not their way, but hers,
- And what they say they made to-day,
- They learned of the oaks and firs.
- She spawneth men as mallows fresh,
- Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh;
- She drugs her water and her wheat
- With the flavors she finds meet,
- And gives them what to drink and eat;
- And having thus their bread and growth,
- They do her bidding, nothing loath.
- What's most theirs is not their own,
- But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone,
- And in their vaunted works of Art
- The master-stroke is still her part.

the romany girl.

- The sun goes down, and with him takes
- The coarseness of my poor attire;
- The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
- Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.
- Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;
- You captives of your air-tight halls,
- Wear out in-doors your sickly days,
- But leave us the horizon walls.
- And if I take you, dames, to task,
- And say it frankly without guile,
- Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
- And I the lady all the while.
- If on the heath, below the moon,
- I court and play with paler blood,
- Me false to mine dare whisper none,—
- One sallow horseman knows me good.
- Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
- For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
- My swarthy tint is in the grain,
- The rocks and forest know it real.
- The wild air bloweth in our lungs,
- The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,
- The birds gave us our wily tongues,
- The panther in our dances flies.
- Ton doubt we read the stars on high,
- Nathless we read your fortunes true;
- The stars may hide in the upper sky,
- But without glass we fathom you.

days.

- Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
- Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
- And marching single in an endless file,
- Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
- To each they offer gifts after his will,
- Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
- I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
- Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
- Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
- Turned and departed silent I, too late,
- Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

the chartist's complaint.

- Day! hast thou two faces,
- Making one place two places?
- One, by humble farmer seen,
- Chill and wet, unlighted, mean,
- Useful only, triste and damp,
- Serving for a laborer's lamp?
- Have the same mists another side,
- To be the appanage of pride,
- Gracing the rich man's wood and lake,
- His park where amber mornings break,
- And treacherously bright to show
- His planted isle where roses glow?
- O Day! and is your mightiness
- A sycophant to smug success?
- Will the sweet sky and ocean broad
- Be fine accomplices to fraud?
- O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray:
- Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

my garden.

- If I could put my woods in song
- And tell what's there enjoyed,
- All men would to my gardens throng,
- And leave the cities void.
- In my plot no tulips blow,—
- Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
- And rank the savage maples grow
- From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.
- My garden is a forest ledge
- Which older forests bound;
- The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
- Then plunge to depths profound.
- Here once the Deluge ploughed,
- Laid the terraces, one by one;
- Ebbing later whence it flowed,
- They bleach and dry in the sun.
- The sowers made haste to depart,—
- The wind and the birds which sowed it;
- Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
- Planted these, and tempests flowed it.
- Waters that wash my garden side
- Play not in Nature's lawful web,
- They heed not moon or solar tide,—
- Five years elapse from flood to ebb.
- Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
- And every god,—none did refuse;
- And be sure at last came Love,
- And after Love, the Muse.
- Keen ears can catch a syllable,
- As if one spake to another,
- In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
- And what the whispering grasses smother.
- Æolian harps in the pine
- Ring with the song of the Fates;
- Infant Bacchus in the vine,—
- Far distant yet his chorus waits.
- Canst thou copy in verse one chime
- Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
- Write in a book the morning's prime,
- Or match with words that tender sky
- Wonderful verse.of the gods,
- Of one import, of varied tone;
- They chant the bliss of their abodes
- To man imprisoned in his own.
- Ever the words of the gods resound;
- But the porches of man's ear
- Seldom in this low life's round
- Are unsealed, that he may hear
- Wandering voices in the air
- And murmurs in the wold
- Speak what I cannot declare,
- Yet cannot all withhold.
- When the shadow fell on the lake,
- The whirlwind in ripples wrote
- Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
- And omens above thought.
- But the meanings cleave to the lake,
- Cannot be carried in book or urn;
- Go thy ways now, come later back,
- On waves and hedges still they burn.
- These the fates of men forecast,
- Of better men than live to-day;
- If who can read them comes at last
- He will spell in the sculpture, ‘Stay.’

the titmouse.

- You shall not be overbold
- When you deal with arctic cold,
- As late I found my lukewarm blood
- Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood.
- How should I fight? my foeman fine
- Has million arms to one of mine:
- East, west, for aid I looked in vain,
- East, west, north, south, are his domain.
- Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home;
- Must borrow his winds who there would coma
- Up and away for life! be fleet!—
- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
- Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
- Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
- Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
- And hems in life with narrowing fence.
- Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,—
- The punctual stars will vigil keep,—
- Embalmed by purifying cold;
- The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
- The snow is no ignoble shroud,
- The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.
- Softly,—but this way fate was pointing,
- T was coming fast to such anointing,
- When piped a tiny voice hard by,
- Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
- Chic-chicadeedee! saucy note
- Out of sound heart and merry throat,
- As if it said, ‘Good day, good sir!
- Fine afternoon, old passenger!
- Happy to meet you in these places,
- Where January brings few faces.’
- This poet, though he live apart,
- Moved by his hospitable heart,
- Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
- To do the honors of his court,
- As fits a feathered lord of land,
- Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,
- Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
- Prints his small impress on the snow,
- Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
- Head downward, clinging to the spray.
- Here was this atom in full breath,
- Hurling defiance at vast death;
- This scrap of valor just for play
- Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,
- As if to shame my weak behavior;
- I greeted loud my little savior,
- ‘You pet! what dost here? and what for?
- In these woods, thy small Labrador,
- At this pinch, wee San Salvador!
- What fire burns in that little chest
- So frolic, stout and self-possest?
- Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine;
- Ashes and jet all hues outshine.
- Why are not diamonds black and gray,
- To ape thy dare-devil array?
- And I affirm, the spacious North
- Exists to draw thy virtue forth.
- I think no virtue goes with size;
- The reason of all cowardice
- Is, that men are overgrown,
- And, to be valiant, must come down
- To the titmouse dimension,’
- 'T is good-will makes intelligence,
- And I began to catch the sense
- Of my bird's song: ‘Live out of doors
- In the great woods, on prairie floors.
- I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,
- I too have a hole in a hollow tree;
- And I like less when Summer beats
- With stifling beams on these retreats,
- Than noontide twilights which snow makes
- With tempest of the blinding flakes.
- For well the soul, if stout within,
- Can arm impregnably the skin;
- And polar frost my frame defied,
- Made of the air that blows outside.’
- With glad remembrance of my debt,
- I homeward turn; farewell, my pet!
- When here again thy pilgrim comes,
- He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs.
- Doubt not, so long as earth has bread,
- Thou first and foremost shalt be fed;
- The Providence that is most large
- Takes hearts like thine in special charge,
- Helps who for their own need are strong,
- And the sky doats on cheerful song.
- Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant
- O'er all that mass and minster vaunt;
- For men mis-hear thy call in Spring,
- As't would accost some frivolous wing,
- Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be!
- And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee!
- I think old Cæsar must have heard
- In northern Gaul my dauntless bird,
- And, echoed in some frosty wold,
- Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.
- And I will write our annals new,
- And thank thee for a better clew,
- I, who dreamed not when I came here
- To find the antidote of fear,
- Now hear thee say in Roman key,
- pœan! Veni, vidi, vici.

the harp.

- One musician is sure,
- His wisdom will not fail,
- He has not tasted wine impure,
- Nor bent to passion frail.
- Age cannot cloud his memory,
- Nor grief untune his voice,
- Ranging down the ruled scale
- From tone of joy to inward wail,
- Tempering the pitch of all
- In his windy cave.
- He all the fables knows,
- And in their causes tells,—
- Knows Nature's rarest moods,
- Ever on her secret broods.
- The Muse of men is coy,
- Oft courted will not come;
- In palaces and market squares
- Entreated, she is dumb;
- But my minstrel knows and tells.
- The counsel of the gods,
- Knows of Holy Book the spells,
- Knows the law of Night and Day,
- And the heart of girl and boy,
- The tragic and the gay,
- And what is writ on Table Round
- Of Arthur and his peers;
- What sea and land discoursing say
- In sidereal years.
- He renders all his lore
- In numbers wild as dreams,
- Modulating all extremes,—
- What the spangled meadow saith
- To the children who have faith;
- Only to children children sing,
- Only to youth will spring be spring.
- Who is the Bard thus magnified?
- When did he sing? and where abide?
- Chief of song where poets feast
- Is the wind-harp which thou seest
- In the casement at my side.
- Æolian harp,
- How strangely wise thy strain!
- Gay for youth, gay for youth,
- (Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
- In the hall at summer eve
- Fate and Beauty skilled to weave
- From the eager opening strings
- Rung loud and bold the song.
- Who but loved the wind-harp's note?
- How should not the poet doat
- On its mystic tongue,
- With its primeval memory,
- Reporting what old minstrels told
- Of Merlin locked the harp within,—
- Merlin paying the pain of sin,
- Pent in a dungeon made of air,—
- And some attain his voice to hear,
- Words of pain and cries of fear,
- But pillowed all on melody,
- As fits the griefs of bards to be.
- And what if that all-echoing shell,
- Which thus the buried Past can tell,
- Should rive the Future, and reveal
- What his dread folds would fain conceal?
- It shares the secret of the earth,
- And of the kinds that owe her birth.
- Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
- But of the Overgods alone:
- It trembles to the cosmic breath,—
- As it heareth, so it saith;
- Obeying meek the primal Cause,
- It is the tongue of mundane laws.
- And this, at least, I dare affirm,
- Since genius too has bound and term,
- There is no bard in all the choir,
- Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
- Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
- Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
- Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
- Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
- Scott, the delight of generous boys,
- Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,—
- Not one of all can put in verse,
- Or to this presence could rehearse
- The sights and voices ravishing
- The boy knew on the hills in spring,
- When pacing through the oaks he heard
- Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
- The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
- The rattle of the kingfisher;
- Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
- In the lowland, when day dies;
- Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
- The first far signal-fire of morn.
- These syllables that Nature spoke,
- And the thoughts that in him woke,
- Can adequately utter none
- Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
- Therein I hear the Pace reel
- The threads of man at their humming wheel,
- The threads of life and power and pain,
- So sweet and mournful falls the strain.
- And best can teach its Delphian chord
- How Nature to the soul is moored,
- If once again that silent string,
- As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
- Not long ago at eventide,
- It seemed, so listening, at my sid
- A window rose, and, to say sooth,
- I looked forth on the fields of youth:
- I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
- I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
- Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
- Mates of my youth,—yet not my mates,
- Stronger and bolder far than I,
- With grace, with genius, well attired
- And then as now from far admired,
- Followed with love
- They knew not of,
- With passion cold and shy.
- O joy, for what recoveries rare!
- Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
- See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,—
- Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
- Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
- Of life resurgent from the soil
- Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.

sea-shore.

- I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea
- Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?
- Am I not always here, thy summer home?
- Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?
- My breath thy healthful climate in the heats.
- My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?
- Was ever building like my terraces?
- Was ever conch magnificent as mine?
- Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
- A little hut suffices like a town.
- I make your sculptured architecture vain,
- Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,
- And carve the coastwise mountain into caves
- Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,
- Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs
- Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab
- Older than all thy race.
- Behold the Sea,
- The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
- Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
- Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
- Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
- Purger of earth, and medicine of men;
- Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
- Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
- And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
- Giving a hint of that which changes not.
- Rich are the sea-gods:—who gives gifts but they?
- They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:
- They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
- For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,
- Wealth to the cunning artist who can work
- This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves!
- A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?
- I with my hammer pounding evermore
- The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust
- Strewing my bed, and, in another age,
- Rebuild a continent of better men.
- Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out
- The exodus of nations: I disperse
- Men to all shores that front the hoary main.
- I too have arts and sorceries;
- Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
- I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal
- With credulous and imaginative man;
- For, though he scoop my water in his palm,
- A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.
- Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,
- I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,
- To distant men, who must go there, or die.

song of nature.

- Mine are the night and morning,
- The pits of air, the gulf of space,
- The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
- The innumerable days.
- I hide in the solar glory,
- I am dumb in the pealing song,
- I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
- In slumber I am strong.
- No numbers have counted my tallies,
- No tribes my house can fill,
- I sit by the shining Fount of Life
- And pour the deluge still;
- And ever by delicate powers
- Gathering along the centuries
- From race on race the rarest flowers,
- My wreath shall nothing miss.
- And many a thousand summers
- My gardens ripened well,
- And light from meliorating stars
- With firmer glory fell.
- I wrote the past in characters
- Of rock and fire the scroll,
- The building in the coral sea,
- The planting of the coal.
- And thefts from satellites and rings
- And broken stars I drew,
- And out of spent and aged things
- I formed the world anew;
- What time the gods kept carnival,
- Tricked out in star and flower,
- And in cramp elf and saurian forms
- They swathed their too much power.
- Time and Thought were my surveyors,
- They laid their courses well,
- They boiled the sea, and piled the layers
- Of granite, marl and shell.
- But he, the man-child glorious,—
- Where tarries he the while?
- The rainbow shines his harbinger,
- The sunset gleams his smile.
- My boreal lights leap upward,
- Forthright my planets roll,
- And still the man-child is not born,
- The summit of the whole.
- Must time and tide forever run?
- Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
- Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
- And satellites have rest?
- Too much of donning and doffing,
- Too slow the rainbow fades,
- I weary of my robe of snow,
- My leaves and my cascades;
- I tire of globes and races,
- Too long the game is played;
- What without him is summer's pomp,
- Or winter's frozen shade?
- I travail in pain for him,
- My creatures travail and wait;
- His couriers come by squadrons,
- He comes not to the gate.
- Twice I have moulded an image,
- And thrice outstretched my hand,
- Made one of day and one of night
- And one of the salt sea-sand.
- One in a Judæan manger,
- And one by Avon stream,
- One over against the mouths of Nile,
- And one in the Academe.
- I moulded kings and saviors,
- And bards o'er kings to rule;—
- But fell the starry influence short,
- The cup was never full.
- Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
- And mix the bowl again;
- Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
- Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
- Let war and trade and creeds and song
- Blend, ripen race on race,
- The sunburnt world a man shall breed
- Of all the zones and countless days.
- No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
- My oldest force is good as new,
- And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
- Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

two rivers.

- Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
- Repeats the music of the rain;
- But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
- Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.
- Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
- The stream I love unbounded goes
- Through flood and sea and firmament;
- Through light, through life, it forward flows.
- I see the inundation sweet.
- I hear the spending of the stream
- Through years, through men, through nature fleet,
- Through love and thought, through power and dream.
- Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
- Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
- They lose their grief who hear his song,
- And where he winds is the day of day.
- So forth and brighter fares my stream,—
- Who drink it shall not thirst again;
- No darkness stains its equal gleam,
- And ages drop in it like rain.

waldeinsamkeit.

- I do not count the hours I spend
- In wandering by the sea:
- The forest is my loyal friend,
- Like God it useth me.
- In plains that room for shadows make
- Of skirting hills to lie,
- Bound in by streams which give and take
- Their colors from the sky;
- Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
- Or down the oaken glade,
- O what have I to do with time?
- For this the day was made.
- Cities of mortals woe-begone
- Fantastic care derides,
- But in the serious landscape lone
- Stern benefit abides.
- Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
- And merry is only a mask of sad,
- But, sober on a fund of joy,
- The woods at heart are glad.
- There the great Planter plants
- Of fruitful worlds the grain,
- And with a million spells enchants
- The souls that walk in pain.
- Still on the seeds of all he made
- The rose of beauty burns;
- Through times that wear and forms that fade,
- Immortal youth returns.
- The black ducks mouuting from the lake,
- The pigeon in the pines,
- The bittern's boom, a desert make
- Which no false art refines.
- Down in yon watery nook,
- Where bearded mists divide,
- The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
- The sires of Nature, hide.
- Aloft, in secret veins of air,
- Blows the sweet breath of song,
- O, few to scale those uplands dare,
- Though they to all belong!
- See thou bring not to field or stone
- The fancies found in books;
- Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own,
- To brave the landscape's looks.
- Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
- Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
- For a proud idleness like this
- Crowns all thy mean affairs.

terminus.

- It is time to be old,
- To take in sail:—
- The god of bounds,
- Who sets to seas a shore,
- Came to me in his fatal rounds,
- And said: ‘No more!
- No farther shoot
- Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
- Fancy departs: no more invent;
- Contract thy firmament
- To compass of a tent.
- There's not enough for this and that,
- Make thy option which of two;
- Economize the failing river,
- Not the less revere the Giver,
- Leave the many and hold the few.
- Timely wise accept the terms,
- Soften the fall with wary foot;
- A little while
- Still plan and smile,
- And,—fault of novel germs,—
- Mature the unfallen fruit.
- Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
- Bad husbands of their fires,
- Who, when they gave thee breath,
- Failed to bequeath
- The needful sinew stark as once,
- The Baresark marrow to thy bones,
- But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
- Inconstant beat and nerveless reins,—
- Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
- Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.’
- As the bird trims her to the gale,
- I trim myself to the storm of time,
- I man the rudder, reef the sail,
- Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
- ‘Lowly faithful, banish fear,
- Right onward drive unharmed;
- The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
- And every wave is charmed.’

the nun's aspiration.

- The yesterday doth never smile,
- The day goes drudging through the while,
- Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
- The morrow front, and can defy;
- Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
- Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
- Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
- If He should make my web a blot
- On life's fair picture of delight,
- My heart's content would find it right.
- But O, these waves and leaves,—
- When happy stoic Nature grieves,
- No human speech so beautiful
- As their murmurs mine to lull.
- On this altar God hath built
- I lay my vanity and guilt;
- Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
- Hearing as now the lofty dirge
- Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
- Nature's funeral high and dim,—
- Sable pageantry of clouds,
- Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
- Many a day shall dawn and die,
- Many an angel wander by,
- And passing, light my sunken turf
- Moist perhaps by ocean surf,
- Forgotten amid splendid tombs,
- Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
- On earth I dream;—I die to be:
- Time, shake not thy bald head at me.
- I challenge thee to hurry past
- Or for my turn to fly too fast.
- Think me not numbed or halt with age,
- Or cares that earth to earth engage,
- Caught with love's cord of twisted beams,
- Or mired by climate's gross extremes.
- I tire of shams, I rush to be:
- I pass with yonder comet free,—
- Pass with the comet into space
- Which mocks thy æons to embrace;
- Æons which tardily unfold
- Realm beyond realm,—extent untold;
- No early morn, no evening late,—
- Realms self-upheld, disdaining Fate,
- Whose shining sons, too great for fame,
- Never heard thy weary name;
- Nor lives the tragic bard to say
- How drear the part I held in one,
- How lame the other limped away.

april.

- The April winds are magical
- And thrill our tuneful frames;
- The garden walks are passional
- To bachelors and dames.
- The hedge is gemmed with diamonds,
- The air with Cupids full.
- The cobweb clues of Rosamond
- Guide lovers to the pool.
- Each dimple in the water,
- Each leaf that shades the rock
- Can cozen, pique and flatter,
- Can parley and provoke.
- Goodfellow, Puck and goblins,
- Know more than any book.
- Down with your doleful problems,
- And court the sunny brook.
- The south-winds are quick-witted,
- The schools are sad and slow,
- The masters quite omitted
- The lore we care to know.

maiden speech of the æolian harp.

- Soft and softlier hold me, friends!
- Thanks if your genial care
- Unbind and give me to the air.
- Keep your lips or finger-tips
- For flute or spinet's dancing chips;
- I await a tenderer touch,
- I ask more or not so much:
- Give me to the atmosphere,—
- Where is the wind, my brother,—where?
- Lift the sash, lay me within,
- Lend me your ears, and I begin.
- For gentle harp to gentle hearts
- The secret of the world imparts;
- And not to-day and not to-morrow
- Can drain its wealth of hope and sorrow;
- But day by day, to loving ear
- Unlocks new sense and loftier cheer.
- I've come to live with you, sweet friends,
- This home my minstrel-journeyings ends.
- Many and subtle are my lays,
- The latest better than the first,
- For I can mend the happiest days
- And charm the anguish of the worst.

cupido.

- The solid, solid universe
- Is pervious to Love;
- With bandaged eyes he never errs,
- Around, below, above.
- His blinding light
- He flingeth white
- On God's and Satan's brood,
- And reconciles
- By mystic wiles
- The evil and the good.

the past.

- The debt is paid,
- The verdict said,
- The Furies laid,
- The plague is stayed,
- All fortunes made;
- Turn the key and bolt the door,
- Sweet is death forevermore.
- Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
- Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
- All is now secure and fast;
- Not the gods can shake the Past;
- Flies-to the adamantine door
- Bolted down forevermore.
- None can re-enter there,—
- No thief so politic,
- No Satan with a royal trick
- Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
- To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
- Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
- New-face or finish what is packed,
- Alter or mend eternal Fact.

the last farewell.
lines written by the author's brother, edward bliss emerson, whilst sailing out of boston harbor, bound for the island of porto rico, in 1832.

- Farewell, ye lofty spires
- That cheered the holy light!
- Farewell, domestic fires
- That broke the gloom of night!
- Too soon those spires are lost,
- Too fast we leave the bay,
- Too soon by ocean tost
- From hearth and home away,
- Far away, far away.
- Farewell the busy town,
- The wealthy and the wise,
- Kind smile and honest frown
- From bright, familiar eyes.
- All these are fading now;
- Our brig hastes on her way,
- Her unremembering prow
- Is leaping o'er the sea,
- Far away, far away.
- Farewell, my mother fond,
- Too kind, too good to me;
- Nor pearl nor diamond
- Would pay my debt to thee.
- But even thy kiss denies
- Upon my cheek to stay;
- The winged vessel flies,
- And billows round her play,
- Far away, far away.
- Farewell, my brothers true,
- My betters, yet my peers;
- How desert without you
- My few and evil years!
- But though aye one in heart,
- Together sad or gay,
- Rude ocean doth us part;
- We separate to-day,
- Far away, far away.
- Farewell I breathe again
- To dim New England's shore;
- My heart shall beat not when
- I pant for thee no more.
- In yon green palmy isle,
- Beneath the tropic ray,
- I murmur never while
- For thee and thine I pray;
- Far away, far away.

in memoriam.
edward bliss emerson.

- I mourn upon this battle-field,
- But not for those who perished here.
- Behold the river-bank
- Whither the angry farmers came,
- In sloven dress and broken rank,
- Nor thought of fame.
- Their deed of blood
- All mankind praise;
- Even the serene Reason says,
- It was well done.
- The wise and simple have one glance
- To greet yon stern head-stone,
- Which more of pride than pity gave
- To mark the Briton's friendless grave.
- Yet it is a stately tomb;
- The grand return
- Of eve and morn,
- The year's fresh bloom,
- The silver cloud,
- Might grace the dust that is most proud.
- Yet not of these I muse
- In this ancestral place,
- But of a kindred face
- That never joy or hope shall here diffuse.
- Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star:
- What hast thou to do with these
- Haunting this bank's historic trees?
- Thou born for noblest life,
- For action's field, for victor's car,
- Thon living champion of the right?
- To these their penalty belonged:
- I grudge not these their bed of death,
- But thine to thee, who never wronged
- The poorest that drew breath.
- All inborn power that could
- Consist with homage to the good
- Flamed from his martial eye;
- He who seemed a soldier born,
- He should have the helmet worn,
- All friends to fend, all foes defy,
- Fronting foes of God and man,
- Frowning down the evil-doer,
- Battling for the weak and poor.
- His from youth the leader's look
- Gave the law which others took,
- And never poor beseeching glance
- Shamed that sculptured countenance.
- There is no record left on earth,
- Save in tablets of the heart,
- Of the rich inherent worth,
- Of the grace that on him shone,
- Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit:
- He could not frame a word unfit,
- An act unworthy to be done;
- Honor prompted every glance,
- Honor came and sat beside him,
- In lowly cot or painful road,
- And evermore the cruel god.
- Cried, “Onward!” and the palm-crown showed.
- Born for success he seemed,
- With grace to win, with heart to hold,
- With shining gifts that took all eyes,
- With budding power in college-halls,
- As pledged in coming days to forge
- Weapons to guard the State, or scourge
- Tyrants despite their guards or walls.
- On his young promise Beauty smiled,
- Drew his free homage unbeguiled,
- And prosperous Age held out his hand,
- And richly his large future planned,
- And troops of friends enjoyed the tide,—
- All, all was given, and only health denied.
- I see him with superior smile
- Hunted by Sorrow's grisly train
- In lands remote, in toil and pain,
- With angel patience labor on,
- With the high port he wore erewhile,
- When, foremost of the youthful band,
- The prizes in all lists he won;
- Nor bate one jot of heart or hope,
- And, least of all, the loyal tie
- Which holds to home ‘neath every sky,
- The joy and pride the pilgrim feels
- In hearts which round the hearth at home
- Keep pulse for pulse with those who roam.
- What generous beliefs console
- The brave whom Fate denies the goal!
- If others reach it, is content;
- To Heaven's high will his will is bent.
- Firm on his heart relied,
- What lot soe'er betide,
- Work of his hand
- He nor repents nor grieves,
- Pleads for itself the fact,
- As unrepenting Nature leaves
- Her every act.
- Fell the bolt on the branching oak;
- The rainbow of his hope was broke;
- No craven cry, no secret tear,—
- He told no pang, he knew no fear;
- Its peace sublime his aspect kept,
- His purpose woke, his features slept;
- And yet between the spasms of pain
- His genius beamed with joy again.
- O'er thy rich dust the endless smile
- Of Nature in thy Spanish isle
- Hints never loss or cruel break
- And sacrifice for love's dear sake,
- Nor mourn the unalterable Days
- That Genius goes and Folly stays.
- What matters how, or from what ground,
- The freed soul its Creator found?
- Alike thy memory embalms
- That orange-grove, that isle of palms,
- And these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold
- Root in the blood of heroes old.

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Nature and Life: nature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

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

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nature.

i.

nature.

ii.

the romany girl.

days.

the chartist's complaint.

my garden.

the titmouse.

the harp.

sea-shore.

song of nature.

two rivers.

waldeinsamkeit.

terminus.

the nun's aspiration.

april.

maiden speech of the æolian harp.

cupido.

the past.

the last farewell. lines written by the author's brother, edward bliss emerson, whilst sailing out of boston harbor, bound for the island of porto rico, in 1832.

in memoriam. edward bliss emerson.

the last farewell.
lines written by the author's brother, edward bliss emerson, whilst sailing out of boston harbor, bound for the island of porto rico, in 1832.

in memoriam.
edward bliss emerson.