Touches a cheek with colors of romance, And crowds a history into a glance; 1 Compare the essay on Plato:' Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate himself on the earth and cover his eyes whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named... He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demonstrate... that this Being exceeded the limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknowLedged the Ineffable.' 2 Compare Bryant's 'Flood of Years.' LET me go where'er I will, It is not only in the rose, Not only where the rainbow glows, "T is not in the high stars alone, THE TITMOUSE 4 You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, 1883. 3 In 1883 this poem was printed among the 'Fragments on Nature and Life,' in an Appendix. It first. appears as a separate poem, with title, in the Centenary Edition of 1904. The snow still lies even with the tops of the walls across the Walden road, and, this afternoon, I waded through the woods to my grove. A chickadee came out to greet me, flew about within reach of my hands Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, rested there two seconds, then up again just over my head, and busied himself on the dead bark. I whisled to him through my teeth, and (I think, in response) he began at once to whistle. I promised him crumbs, and must not go again to these woods without them. I suppose the best food to carry would be the meat of shagbarks or Castile nuts. Thoreau tells me that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, and will take crumbs from their hands. (Journal, March 3, 1862.) Compare Holmes's characteristic comment on this poem, in his Pages from an Old Volume of Life: The moral of the poem is as heroic as the verse is exquisite ; but we must not forget the non-conducting quality of fur and feathers, and remember, if we are at all delicate, to go Wrapped in our virtue, and a good surtout, by way of additional security.' Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, 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, 40 50 'You pet! what dost here? and what for? 'Tis 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. 60 I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, I think old Cæsar must have heard Now hear thee say in Roman key, 1862. BOSTON HYMN 100 1862. The snowflake is her banner's star, She will not refuse to dwell Hid from men of Northern brain, For freedom he will strike and strive, III In an age of fops and toys, 40 And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil and fray? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, 70 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.1 IV Он, well for the fortunate soul But best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. 80 90 100 110 1 These lines, a moment after they were written, seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years. (HOLMES, Life of Emerson.) Compare Emerson's Address at the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument in Concord,' especially the paragraph beginning: All sorts of men went to the war; and his Harvard Commemoration Speech, July 21, 1865.' 2 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, May 14, 1846: 'I, too, have a new plaything, the best I ever had, - a woodlot. Last fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond; -a place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice a week at all seasons.' See the whole letter, in the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 123–125. |