VIII.

POEMS IN HONOR OF EMERSON.

I.

SONNET OF 1884.- MISS EMMA Lazarus.

TO R. W. E.

As, when a father dies, his children draw
About the empty hearth, their loss to cheat
With uttered praise and love, and oft repeat
His all-familiar words with whispered awe, -
The honored habit of his daily law;

Not for his sake, but theirs, whose feebler feet
Need still that guiding lamp, whose faith less sweet
Misses that tempered patience without flaw;-
So do we gather round thy vacant chair,

In thine own elm-roofed, amber-rivered town,
Master and father! For the love we bear,
Not for thy fame's sake, do we weave this crown,
And feel thy presence in the sacred air,
Forbidding us to weep that thou art gone.

NEW YORK, May, 1884.

IF we should rake the bottom of the sea
For its best treasures,

And heap our measures,

If we should ride upon the winds, and be
Partakers of their flight

By day and through the night,
Intent upon this business, to find gold,

Yet were thy story perfectly untold.

Such waves of wealth are rolled up in thy soul,Such swelling argosies

Laden with Time's supplies,

Such pure, delicious wine shines in the bowl,
We could drink evermore

Upon the glittering shore,

Drink of the pearl-dissolvèd, brilliant cup,
Be madly drunk, and drown our thirsting up:

This vessel richly chased about the rim
With golden emblems is, -

The utmost art of bliss;

With figures of the azure gods who swim
In the enchanted sea

Contrived for deity,

Floating in rounded shells of purple hue;
The sculptor died in carving this so true.

Some dry uprooted saplings we have seen,
Pretend to even

This grove of Heaven,

This sacred forest where the foliage green
Breathes music like mild lutes,

Or silver-coated flutes,

Or the concealing winds that can convey
Never their tone to the rude ear of Day.

Some weary-footed mortals we have found
Adventuring after thee;

They, rooted, as a tree

Pursues a swift breeze o'er a rocky ground, –
Thy grand imperial flight

As

Sweeping thee far from sight,

sweeps the movement of a southern blast Across the heated Gulf, and bends the mast.

The circles of thy thought shine vast as stars;
No glass shall round them,

No plummet sound them,

They hem the observer like bright steel-wrought bars; Yet limpid as the sun,

Or as bright waters run

From the cold fountain of an Alpine spring,
Or diamonds richly set in the King's ring.

The piercing of thy soul scorches the thought,
As great fires burning,

Or sunlight turning

Into a focus; in its meshes caught,

Our palpitating minds

Show stupid, like coarse hinds;

So strong and composite through all thy powers
The Intellect divine serenely towers.

This heavy castle's gates no man can ope,
Unless the lord doth will,

To prove his skill

And read the fates hid in his horoscope;
No man may enter there

But first shall kneel in prayer,

And to superior gods orisons say,
Powers of old time, unveiled in busy Day.

Thou need'st not search for men in Sidney's times,
Or Raleigh fashion,

And Herbert's passion,

For us these are but dry preservèd limes;
There is ripe fruit to-day

Hangs yellow in display

Upon the waving garment of the bough;
The graceful Gentleman lives for us now.

Neither must thou turn back to Angelo,
Who Rome commanded,

And, single-handed,

Was architect, poet, and bold sculptor too:
Behold a better thing

When the pure Mind can sing;

When true philosophy is linked with verse,
When moral laws in rhyme themselves rehearse.