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

100

1862.

Building for their sons the State, Which they shall rule with pride. They forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by Union' as the bribe. Destiny sat by, and said,

Pang for pang your seed shall pay, Hide in false peace your coward head, I bring round the harvest day.'

II

FREEDOM all winged expands,
Nor perches in a narrow place;
Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;
She loves a poor and virtuous race.
Clinging to a colder zone

30

Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down,

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

40

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.

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.'

Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers make haste to depart,
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide,
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god, -none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.

20

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.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime

Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote

Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'

TERMINUS1

It is time to be old, To take in sail:

40

50

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: 'No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 60 And every wave is charmed.'

1866.

10

20

36

40

1867.

ter lecturing trip, in those days extending beyond the Mississippi. We spent the night together at the St. Denis Hotel, and as we sat by the fire, he read me two or three of his poems for the new May-Day volume, among them Terminus.' It almost startled me. No thought of his ageing had ever come to me, and there he sat, with no apparent abatement of bodily vigor, and young in spirit, recognizing with serene acquiescence his failing forces; I think he smiled as he read. recognized, as none of us did, that his working days were nearly done. They lasted about five years longer, although he lived, in comfortable health, yet ten years beyond those of his activity. Almost at the time when he wrote Terminus' he wrote in his journal: -

He

Within I do not find wrinkles and used heart, but unspent youth.' (E. W. EMERSON, in the Centenary Edition.)

THE SPIRIT OF POETRY

Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in,

Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale,

The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees,

In many a lazy syllable, repeating
Their old poetic legends to the wind.

And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill The world; and, in these wayward days of youth,

My busy fancy oft embodies it,

As a bright image of the light and beauty 40 That dwell in nature; of the heavenly

forms