Fair the soul's recess and shrine,

Magic-built to last a season;
Masterpiece of love benign,
Fairer that expansive reason
Whose omen 't is, and sign.

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

From lengthening scroll of human fates, Voice of earth to earth returned, Prayers of saints that inly burned, – Saying, What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent;

Hearts are dust, hearts' lores 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.'

TO J. W.1

SET not thy foot on graves;

Hear what wine and roses say;

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1846.

The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well de

lay.

Set not thy foot on graves;

Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time

And Nature have allowed

To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead

1 To John Weiss, who had written a severe judgment of Coleridge.

2 The circumstance which gave rise to this poem, though not known, can easily be inferred. Rev. William Henry Channing, nephew of the great Unitarian divine, a man most tender in his sympathies, with an apostle's zeal for right, had, no doubt, been urging his friend to join the brave band of men who were dedicating their lives to the destruction of human slavery in the United States. To these men Mr. Emerson gave honor and sympathy and active aid by word and presence on important occasions. He showed his colors from the first, and spoke fearlessly on the subject in his lectures, but his method was the reverse of theirs, affirmative not negative; he knew his office and followed his genius. He said, I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts.' (E. W. EMERSON.)

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;
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd; -
The over-god

Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples,
He who exterminates

Races by stronger races,

Black by white faces,
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit ;

Her last noble is ruined,
Her last poet mute :
Straight, into double band
The victors divide;

Half for freedom strike and stand;

And misty lowland, where to go for peat. The land is well, lies fairly to the south. 'T is good, when you have crossed the sea

and back,

To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds

Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. Hear what the Earth says:

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.

FORERUNNERS 1

6c

1846.

LONG I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew, I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument

Leaves on the wind melodious trace;

Yet I could never see their face.

On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers

Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,

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These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,

1 Compare Lowell's 'Envoi, To the Muse,' and Whittier's The Vanishers;' and also, in Emerson's essay on Nature' (Essays, Second Series), the third paragraph from the end, beginning Quite analogous to the deceits in life.'