Listening with delicate ear

To each fine note that fell from tree or sky,
Or rose from earth on high,-

Glancing his falcon eye,

In kindly radiance, as of some young star,
At all the shows of Nature near and far,

Or on the tame procession plodding by

Of daily toil and care, and all Life's pageantry; Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love, Wide as the sun's great orbit, and as high above These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply.

IX.

His was the task and his the lordly gift
Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift;
He found us chained in Plato's fabled cave,
Our faces long averted from the blaze

Of Heaven's broad light, and idly turned to gaze
On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave

That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted;
By shadows haunted

We sat,

amused in youth, in manhood daunted,
In vacant age forlorn,- then slipped within the grave,
The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud.
These captives, bound and bowed,

He from their dungeon like that angel led,
Who softly to imprisoned Peter said,

"Arise up quickly! gird thyself and flee!"

We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our

souls were free.

X.

Ah! blest those years of youthful hope,

When every breeze was zephyr, every morning

May!

Then, as we bravely climbed the slope

Of life's steep mount, we gained a wider scope
At every stair, and could with joy survey

-

The track beneath us, and the upward way;
Both lay in light, round both the breath of love
Fragrant and warm from Heaven's own tropic blew;
Beside us what glad comrades smiled and strove !
Beyond us what dim visions rose to view!

With thee, dear Master, through that morning land
We journeyed happy; thine the guiding hand,
Thine the far-looking eye, the dauntless smile;
Thy lofty song of hope did the long march beguile.

XI.

Now scattered wide and lost to loving sight
The gallant train

That heard thy strain!

'Tis May no longer, shadows of the night
Beset the downward path, thy light withdrawn, —
And with thee vanished that perpetual dawn
Of which thou wert the harbinger and seer.
Yet courage! comrades, though no more we hear
Each other's voices, lost within this cloud
That Time and Chance about our way have cast,
Still his brave music haunts the hearkening ear,

As 'mid bold cliffs and dewy passes of the Past.
Be that our countersign! for chanting loud,

His magic song, though far apart we go,
Best shall we thus discern both friend and foe.

CONCORD, May, 1882.

IV.

TWO SONNETS. MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

EMERSON.

I.

LIKE some old Titan of majestic height,

His march has been with grand and solemn tread,
The brain profoundly working, while the head,

Circled by mists, was often hid from sight;

Yet from its cloud, when great thought flashed to light,

That mighty brain by the elect was read;

The many saw not, turned away instead,

His brightness, veiled, to them was only night.
But, as he walked, anon at either side

Fell pregnant seeds of thought, which, taking root
In minds long barren, showed the tender shoot
That later blossomed: clouds might genius hide,
Yet everywhere the great man planted foot,
His mark remains, and shall through time abide.
NEW YORK, April, 1882.

II.

DEAR Nature's Child, he nestled close to Her! She to his heart had whispered deeper things Than Science from the wells of learning brings: His still small voice the human soul could stir, For Nature made him her interpreter,

And gave her favorite son far-reaching wings, -
He soared and sang (as Heaven's lark only sings)
Devout in praise, Truth's truest worshipper.
With eyes anointed in his upward flight,

He quick discerned what was divine in men, -
Reading the humblest spirit's tongue aright:
Oh, Prophet, Poet, Leader! in thy light
How many saw beyond their natural ken,
Who follow now the star which led them then!

NEW CASTLE, N. H., Sept. 5, 1884.

IX.

EMERSON'S ETHICS.

BY EDWIN D. MEAD.

I THINK the only thing which will secure to this Concord School of Philosophy a long remembrance will be the mention of it in Emerson's biography. When we are dead, men will read there, that in the evening of his life he was interested in these meetings and read lectures in them; and this mention will secure that men shall ask of them, to a day when else all questions had long ceased. It is proper, then, and worthy that we should give his thought that large measure of attention and of prominence which we do give it here and now. It is well that we American students of philosophy should seek to learn and to teach the doctrine of this greatest master of ours, and greatest — perhaps the only great – American philosopher. For, much more than philosopher, so much more that the philosopher is but one simple element in the harmonious man, in nowise monopolizing or tyrannizing over temperament and powers, yet is Emerson truly one of the greatest philosophers of all time, and has given the deepest