GOLD and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat,
Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat,
When the Church is social worth,
When the state-house is the hearth,
Then the perfect State is come,
The republican at home.
RUBY wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; Thunder-clouds are Jove's festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread, Lightning-knotted round his head; The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.
THE sun set, but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye; And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again:
His action won such reverence sweet
As hid all measure of the feat.
1 A part of this motto was taken from The Poet, an early poem never published by Mr. Emerson. See Appendix.
CAN rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky, And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye: But, to his native centre fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past,
And the world's flowing fates in his own mould
FRIENDSHIP.
A RUDDY drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
WAS never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone, But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave; He flung in pebbles well to hear The moment's music which they gave. Oft pealed for him a lofty tone From nodding pole and belting zone. He heard a voice none else could hear From centred and from errant sphere. The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. In dens of passion, and pits of woe, He saw strong Eros struggling through, To sun the dark and solve the curse, And beam to the bounds of the universe.
While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, How spread their lures for him in vain Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
GRACE, Beauty and Caprice Build this golden portal;
Graceful women, chosen men,
Dazzle every mortal.
Their sweet and lofty countenance
His enchanted food;
He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.
He looketh seldom in their face, His eyes explore the ground, The green grass is a looking-glass Whereon their traits are found. Little and less he says to them, So dances his heart in his breast; Their tranquil mien bereaveth him Of wit, of words, of rest.
Too weak to win, too fond to shun The tyrants of his doom,
The much deceived Endymion Slips behind a tomb.
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