Read Ebook: Poems Household Edition by Emerson Ralph Waldo

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Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?' Devastator of the day! Know, each substance and relation, Thorough nature's operation, Hath its unit, bound and metre; And every new compound Is some product and repeater,-- Product of the earlier found. But the unit of the visit, The encounter of the wise,-- Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature, Riding on the ray of sight, Fleeter far than whirlwinds go, Or for service, or delight, Hearts to hearts their meaning show, Sum their long experience, And import intelligence. Single look has drained the breast; Single moment years confessed. The duration of a glance Is the term of convenance, And, though thy rede be church or state, Frugal multiples of that. Speeding Saturn cannot halt; Linger,--thou shalt rue the fault: If Love his moment overstay, Hatred's swift repulsions play.

URIEL

It fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, Seyd overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirred the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line. 'Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, A shudder ran around the sky; The stern old war-gods shook their heads, The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds; Seemed to the holy festival The rash word boded ill to all; The balance-beam of Fate was bent; The bounds of good and ill were rent; Strong Hades could not keep his own, But all slid to confusion.

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell On the beauty of Uriel; In heaven once eminent, the god Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud; Whether doomed to long gyration In the sea of generation, Or by knowledge grown too bright To hit the nerve of feebler sight. Straightway, a forgetting wind Stole over the celestial kind, And their lips the secret kept, If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then, truth-speaking things Shamed the angels' veiling wings; And, shrilling from the solar course, Or from fruit of chemic force, Procession of a soul in matter, Or the speeding change of water, Or out of the good of evil born, Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And the gods shook, they knew not why.

THE WORLD-SOUL

Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest free; Thanks to each man of courage, To the maids of holy mind, To the boy with his games undaunted Who never looks behind.

Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers, Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly,-- Time-and-space-conquering steam,-- And the light-outspeeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base; The letters do not cheer; And 'tis far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn; We plot and corrupt each other, And we despoil the unborn.

Yet there in the parlor sits Some figure of noble guise,-- Our angel, in a stranger's form, Or woman's pleading eyes; Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window-pane; Or Music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain.

The inevitable morning Finds them who in cellars be; And be sure the all-loving Nature Will smile in a factory. Yon ridge of purple landscape, Yon sky between the walls, Hold all the hidden wonders In scanty intervals.

Alas! the Sprite that haunts us Deceives our rash desire; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire. We cannot learn the cipher That's writ upon our cell; Stars taunt us by a mystery Which we could never spell.

If but one hero knew it, The world would blush in flame; The sage, till he hit the secret, Would hang his head for shame. Our brothers have not read it, Not one has found the key; And henceforth we are comforted,-- We are but such as they.

Still, still the secret presses; The nearing clouds draw down; The crimson morning flames into The fopperies of the town. Within, without the idle earth, Stars weave eternal rings; The sun himself shines heartily, And shares the joy he brings.

And what if Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er?-- They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-color From him that sends the dream.

For Destiny never swerves Nor yields to men the helm; He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves, Throughout the solid realm. The patient Daemon sits, With roses and a shroud; He has his way, and deals his gifts,-- But ours is not allowed.

He is no churl nor trifler, And his viceroy is none,-- Love-without-weakness,-- Of Genius sire and son. And his will is not thwarted; The seeds of land and sea Are the atoms of his body bright, And his behest obey.

He serveth the servant, The brave he loves amain; He kills the cripple and the sick, And straight begins again; For gods delight in gods, And thrust the weak aside; To him who scorns their charities Their arms fly open wide.

When the old world is sterile And the ages are effete, He will from wrecks and sediment The fairer world complete. He forbids to despair; His cheeks mantle with mirth; And the unimagined good of men Is yeaning at the birth.

Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old; Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift The warm rosebuds below.

THE SPHINX

The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. "Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?-- I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept:--

"The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Daedalian plan; Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking; Deep underneath deep?

"Erect as a sunbeam, Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses, Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings.

"The babe by its mother Lies bath?d in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,-- The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies.

"But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground.

"Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear;-- At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere:-- 'Who has drugged my boy's cup? Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head?'"

I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, 'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime.

"The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain.

"To vision profounder, Man's spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb At no goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found,--for new heavens He spurneth the old.

"Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free?-- I would he were nobler Than to love me.

"Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies; And under pain, pleasure,-- Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear!" The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,-- Said, "Who taught thee me to name? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow; Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

"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."

ALPHONSO OF CASTILE

I, Alphonso, live and learn, Seeing Nature go astern. Things deteriorate in kind; Lemons run to leaves and rind; Meagre crop of figs and limes; Shorter days and harder times. Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies. Imps, at high midsummer, blot Half the sun's disk with a spot; 'Twill not now avail to tan Orange cheek or skin of man. Roses bleach, the goats are dry, Lisbon quakes, the people cry. Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools, Gaunt as bitterns in the pools, Are no brothers of my blood;-- They discredit Adamhood. Eyes of gods! ye must have seen, O'er your ramparts as ye lean, The general debility; Of genius the sterility; Mighty projects countermanded; Rash ambition, brokenhanded; Puny man and scentless rose Tormenting Pan to double the dose. Rebuild or ruin: either fill Of vital force the wasted rill, Or tumble all again in heap To weltering Chaos and to sleep.

Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry, Which fed the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With science poorly mask their hurt; And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you Still are rulers, or Mildew?

Masters, I'm in pain with you; Masters, I'll be plain with you; In my palace of Castile, I, a king, for kings can feel. There my thoughts the matter roll, And solve and oft resolve the whole. And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise, Ye shall not fail for sound advice. Before ye want a drop of rain, Hear the sentiment of Spain.

You have tried famine: no more try it; Ply us now with a full diet; Teach your pupils now with plenty, For one sun supply us twenty. I have thought it thoroughly over,-- State of hermit, state of lover; We must have society, We cannot spare variety. Hear you, then, celestial fellows! Fits not to be overzealous; Steads not to work on the clean jump, Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump. Men and gods are too extense; Could you slacken and condense? Your rank overgrowths reduce Till your kinds abound with juice? Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!' My counsel is, kill nine in ten, And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal. Add their nine lives to this cat; Stuff their nine brains in one hat; Make his frame and forces square With the labors he must dare; Thatch his flesh, and even his years With the marble which he rears. There, growing slowly old at ease No faster than his planted trees, He may, by warrant of his age, In schemes of broader scope engage. So shall ye have a man of the sphere Fit to grace the solar year.

MITHRIDATES

I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line, All between that works or grows, Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat; Give me cantharids to eat; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all zones and altitudes;--

From all natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame: Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, be my game.

Ivy for my fillet band; Blinding dog-wood in my hand; Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, And the prussic juice to lull me; Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.

Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and artery, though ye kill me!

TO J.W.

Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

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 Of his sad ornament, His myrrh, and wine, and rings,

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