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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.'

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LET me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,

Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings..

"T is not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.

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

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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,
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,

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'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.'

'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.

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I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,

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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,
Paan! Veni, vidi, vici.

1862.

BOSTON HYMN

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1862.

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The snowflake is her banner's star,
Her stripes the boreal streamers are.
Long she loved the Northman well;
Now the iron age is done,

She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the Sun;
Foundling of the desert far,
Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning ways
In climates of the summer star.
He has avenues to God

Hid from men of Northern brain,
Far beholding, without cloud,
What these with slowest steps attain.
If once the generous chief arrive
To lead him willing to be led,

For freedom he will strike and strive,
And drain his heart till he be dead.

III

In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,
Break sharply off their jolly games,
Forsake their comrades gay

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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
To hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

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When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.1

IV

Он, well for the fortunate soul
Which Music's wings infold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtile thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought.

But best befriended of the God

He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around, all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain
Him duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.

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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.'

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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.

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