Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 27

QUATRAINS

A.H.

High was her heart, and yet was well inclined, Her manners made of bounty well refined; Far capitals and marble courts, her eye still seemed to see, Minstrels and kings and high-born dames, and of the best that be.

HUSH!

Every thought is public, Every nook is wide; Thy gossips spread each whisper, And the G.o.ds from side to side.

ORATOR

He who has no hands Perforce must use his tongue; Foxes are so cunning Because they are not strong.

ARTIST

Quit the hut, frequent the palace, Reck not what the people say; For still, where'er the trees grow biggest, Huntsmen find the easiest way.

POET

Ever the Poet _from_ the land Steers his bark and trims his sail; Right out to sea his courses stand, New worlds to find in pinnace frail.

POET

To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds.

BOTANIST

Go thou to thy learned task, I stay with the flowers of Spring: Do thou of the Ages ask What me the Hours will bring.

GARDENER

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, Expound the Vedas of the violet, Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a loop, See the plum redden, and the beurre stoop.

FORESTER

He took the color of his vest From rabbit's coat or grouse's breast; For, as the wood-kinds lurk and hide, So walks the woodman, unespied.

NORTHMAN

The gale that wrecked you on the sand, It helped my rowers to row; The storm is my best galley hand And drives me where I go.

FROM ALCUIN

The sea is the road of the bold, Frontier of the wheat-sown plains, The pit wherein the streams are rolled And fountain of the rains.

EXCELSIOR

Over his head were the maple buds, And over the tree was the moon, And over the moon were the starry studs That drop from the angels' shoon.

S.H.

With beams December planets dart His cold eye truth and conduct scanned, July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal hand.

BORROWING

FROM THE FRENCH

Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!

NATURE

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old: But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why, Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

FATE

Her planted eye to-day controls, Is in the morrow most at home, And sternly calls to being souls That curse her when they come.