Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm: Melts things that be to things that seem, Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. 120 Thou canst not catch what they recite Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.' ; Once again the pine-tree sung: Can read thy line, can meet thy glance, Understands the universe; The least breath my boughs which tossed Brings again the Pentecost; To every soul resounding clear In a voice of solemn cheer, 140 160 Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, But it carves the bow of beauty there, 170 The wood and wave each other know But to each thought and thing allied, But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed, 191 The hills where health with health agrees, There lives no man of Nature's worth And to thine eye the vast skies fall, 200 1 As for beauty, I need not look beyond an oar's length for my fill of it.' I do not know whether he [William Ellery Channing] used the expression with design or no, but my eye rested on the charming play of light on the water which he was striking with his paddle. I fancied I had never seen such color, such transparency, such eddies; it was the hue of Rhine wines, it was jasper and verd-antique, topaz and chalcedony, it was gold and green and chestnut and hazel in bewitching succession and relief, without cloud or confusion. (Journal, 1846.) Compare also the paragraph in Emerson's 'Nature' beginning: It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object.' On clucking hens and prating fools, And Nature has miscarried wholly Into failure, into folly." 'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed Nature so to see. Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, And heal the hurts which sin has made. I see thee in the crowd alone; I will be thy companion. Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, 210 220 230 And the bell of beetle and of bee 240 1 What has the imagination created to compare with the science of Astronomy? What is there in Paradise Lost to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville? The contrast between the magnitude and duration of the things, and the animalcule observer! I hope the time will come when there will be a telescope in every street. (Journal, May, 1832.) And the vast mass became vast ocean. But forever doth escape, Like wave or flame, into new forms Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. Yesterday was a bundle of grass. The world is the ring of his spells, As he giveth to all to drink, 270 280 290 Thus or thus they are and think. 1 Mr. Emerson wrote in his note-book in 1859: 'I have often been asked the meaning of the "Sphinx." It is this: The perception of identity unites all things and explains one by another, and the most rare and strange is equally facile as the most common. But if the mind live only in particulars, and see only differences (wanting the power to see the whole - all in each), then the world addresses to this mind a question it cannot answer, and each new fact tears it in pieces and it is vanquished by the distracting variety.' (Centenary Edition.) Man 2 Compare Emerson's essay on 'Self-Reliance: Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him.. is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.' 'Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; Said, 'Who taught thee me to name? 110 I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow; Of thine eye I am eyebeam. 1 Compare Emerson's address on The American Scholar, the paragraph beginning: First one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food.' 'Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply.' Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave: She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame; 'Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am.' THE SNOW-STORM 120 130 1841. ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed Come see the north wind's masonry. Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work wall, Prig;' Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace If I'm not so large as you, I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ'; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.' THE INFORMING SPIRIT1 I THERE is no great and no small And where it cometh, all things are; II I am owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain. 1841. * First printed, without title, as motto to the essay on' History.' |