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The deep Heart answered, "Weepest thou?
Worthier cause for passion wild
If I had not taken the child.
And deemest thou as those who pore,
With aged eyes, short way before,-
Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost?
Taught he not thee-the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen Nature's carnival,
The pure shall see by their own will,
Which overflowing Love shall fill,
'Tis not within the force of fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight-where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table,
As far as the incommunicable;

Taught thee each private sign to raise
Lit by the supersolar blaze.
Past utterance, and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature's heart;

And though no Muse can these impart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

"I came to thee as to a friend;
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks, a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder,

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That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art:
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With prophet, savior and head;
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary's Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon.

And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest?
Would rushing life forget her laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?
High omens ask diviner guess;
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind.
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous, whirling pool;
When frail Nature can no more,
Then the Spirit strikes the hour:
My servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours finite into infinite.

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Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through Nature circling go?
Nail the wild star to its track
On the half-climbed zodiac?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,-
Wilt thou transfix and make it none?
Its onward force too starkly pent
In figure, bone and lineament?
Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,
Talker! the unreplying Fate?
Nor see the genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom?
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built to last a season;
Masterpiece of love benign,
Fairer that expansive reason

Whose omen 'tis, and sign.

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Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 260
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?
Verdict which accumulates

From lengthening scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayer of saints that inly burned,—
Saying, What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;

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Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye
Up to his style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold

Built he heaven stark and cold;

No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass and scented weeds;
Or like a traveller's fleeing tent,
Or bow above the tempest_bent;
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."
1842-1846.

ODE I

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"Poems," 1847.

Dare praise the freedom-loving moun

taineer?

I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.

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1 W. H. Channing (1780-1842) though a gentle scholarly man, was among the early, fearless enemies of slavery. Emerson hated slavery, but Acno more than many another human evil. cording to Emerson's son this poem was probably addressed to W. H. Channing the younger, a nephew, who was also an urgent anti-slavery advocate.

And doth the man unking.

'Tis 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 friendship, 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

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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;—

To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

"Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?-

Fled like the flood's foam.

The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,

Clean swept herefrom.

"They called me theirs,

Who so controlled me;
Yet every one

Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,

If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?"

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled

Like lust in the chill of the grave.

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"Poems," 1847.

MUSKETAQUID

Because I was content with these poor fields,

Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,

And found a home in haunts which others scorned,