Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 5

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In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, And up the tall mast runs the woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.

He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,-- One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went Sweet influence from every element; Whose living towers the years conspired to build, Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, He roamed, content alike with man and beast.

Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; There the red morning touched him with its light.

Three moons his great heart him a hermit made, So long he roved at will the boundless shade.

The timid it concerns to ask their way, And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, To make no step until the event is known, And ills to come as evils past bemoan.

Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps To spy what danger on his pathway creeps; Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth,--his hall the azure dome; Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road By G.o.d's own light illumined and foreshowed.

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'T was one of the charmed days When the genius of G.o.d doth flow; The wind may alter twenty ways, A tempest cannot blow; It may blow north, it still is warm; Or south, it still is clear; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm; Or west, no thunder fear.

The musing peasant, lowly great, Beside the forest water sate; The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown Composed the network of his throne; The wide lake, edged with sand and gra.s.s, Was burnished to a floor of gla.s.s, Painted with shadows green and proud Of the tree and of the cloud.

He was the heart of all the scene; On him the sun looked more serene; To hill and cloud his face was known,-- It seemed the likeness of their own; They knew by secret sympathy The public child of earth and sky.

'You ask,' he said, 'what guide Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide.

I found the water's bed.

The watercourses were my guide; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed.

The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean sand.

The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark; The purple berries in the wood Supplied me necessary food; For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness.

When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, 'T will be time enough to die; Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field, Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover.'

WOODNOTES II

_As sunbeams stream through liberal s.p.a.ce_ _And nothing jostle or displace,_ _So waved the pine-tree through my thought_ _And fanned the dreams it never brought._

'Whether is better, the gift or the donor?

Come to me,'

Quoth the pine-tree, 'I am the giver of honor.

My garden is the cloven rock, And my manure the snow; And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow.

He is great who can live by me: The rough and bearded forester Is better than the lord; G.o.d fills the script and canister, Sin piles the loaded board.

The lord is the peasant that was, The peasant the lord that shall be; The lord is hay, the peasant gra.s.s, One dry, and one the living tree.

Who liveth by the ragged pine Foundeth a heroic line; Who liveth in the palace hall Waneth fast and spendeth all.

He goes to my savage haunts, With his chariot and his care; My twilight realm he disenchants, And finds his prison there.

'What prizes the town and the tower?

Only what the pine-tree yields; Sinew that subdued the fields; The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods Chants his hymn to hills and floods, Whom the city's poisoning spleen Made not pale, or fat, or lean; Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth, In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, In whose feet the lion rusheth, Iron arms, and iron mould, That know not fear, fatigue, or cold.

I give my rafters to his boat, My billets to his boiler's throat, And I will swim the ancient sea To float my child to victory, And grant to dwellers with the pine Dominion o'er the palm and vine.

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

Cut a bough from my parent stem, And dip it in thy porcelain vase; A little while each russet gem Will swell and rise with wonted grace; But when it seeks enlarged supplies, The orphan of the forest dies.

Whoso walks in solitude And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pa.s.s, From these companions, power and grace.

Clean shall he be, without, within, From the old adhering sin, All ill dissolving in the light Of his triumphant piercing sight: Not vain, sour, nor frivolous; Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous; Grave, chaste, contented, though retired, And of all other men desired.

On him the light of star and moon Shall fall with purer radiance down; All constellations of the sky Shed their virtue through his eye.

Him Nature giveth for defence His formidable innocence; The mounting sap, the sh.e.l.ls, the sea, All spheres, all stones, his helpers be; He shall meet the speeding year, Without wailing, without fear; He shall be happy in his love, Like to like shall joyful prove; He shall be happy whilst he wooes, Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.

But if with gold she bind her hair, And deck her breast with diamond, Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, Though thou lie alone on the ground.

'Heed the old oracles, Ponder my spells; Song wakes in my pinnacles When the wind swells.

Soundeth the prophetic wind, The shadows shake on the rock behind, And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-G.o.d sings.

Hearken! Hearken!

If thou wouldst know the mystic song Chanted when the sphere was young.

Aloft, abroad, the paean swells; O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?

O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?

'Tis the chronicle of art.

To the open ear it sings Sweet the genesis of things, Of tendency through endless ages, Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, Of rounded worlds, of s.p.a.ce and time, Of the old flood's subsiding slime, Of chemic matter, force and form, Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm: The rushing metamorphosis Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem, And solid nature to a dream.

O, listen to the undersong, The ever old, the ever young; And, far within those cadent pauses, The chorus of the ancient Causes!

Delights the dreadful Destiny To fling his voice into the tree, And shock thy weak ear with a note Breathed from the everlasting throat.

In music he repeats the pang Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.

O mortal! thy ears are stones; These echoes are laden with tones Which only the pure can hear; Thou canst not catch what they recite Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right, Of man to come, of human life, Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'

Once again the pine-tree sung:-- 'Speak not thy speech my boughs among: Put off thy years, wash in the breeze; My hours are peaceful centuries.

Talk no more with feeble tongue; No more the fool of s.p.a.ce and time, Come weave with mine a n.o.bler rhyme.

Only thy Americans Can read thy line, can meet thy glance, But the runes that I rehea.r.s.e Understands the universe; The least breath my boughs which tossed Brings again the Pentecost; To every soul resounding clear In a voice of solemn cheer,-- "Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"

And they reply, "Forever mine!"

My branches speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, Mountain speech to Highlanders, Ocean tongues to islanders, To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, To each his bosom-secret say.

'Come learn with me the fatal song Which knits the world in music strong, Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, Of things with things, of times with times, Primal chimes of sun and shade, Of sound and echo, man and maid, The land reflected in the flood, Body with shadow still pursued.

For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy.

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

The wood is wiser far than thou; The wood and wave each other know Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect Nature's every part, Rooted in the mighty Heart, But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed, Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed, Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?

Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?

Who thee divorced, deceived and left?

Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, And torn the ensigns from thy brow, And sunk the immortal eye so low?

Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender, Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender For royal man;--they thee confess An exile from the wilderness,-- The hills where health with health agrees, And the wise soul expels disease.

Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.

When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, Or see the wide sh.o.r.e from thy skiff, To thee the horizon shall express But emptiness on emptiness; There lives no man of Nature's worth In the circle of the earth; And to thine eye the vast skies fall, Dire and satirical, On clucking hens and prating fools, On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.

And thou shalt say to the Most High, "G.o.dhead! all this astronomy, And fate and practice and invention, Strong art and beautiful pretension, This radiant pomp of sun and star, Throes that were, and worlds that are, Behold! were in vain and in vain;-- It cannot be,--I will look again.

Surely now will the curtain rise, And earth's fit tenant me surprise;-- But the curtain doth _not_ rise, And Nature has miscarried wholly Into failure, into folly."

'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed Nature so to see.

Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, And heal the hurts which sin has made.

I see thee in the crowd alone; I will be thy companion.

Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory.

Behind thee leave thy merchandise, Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peac.o.c.k wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: Leave all thy pedant lore apart; G.o.d hid the whole world in thy heart.

Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, Gives all to them who all renounce.

The rain comes when the wind calls; The river knows the way to the sea; Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind; The shadow sits close to the flying ball; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; And thou,--go burn thy wormy pages,-- Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.

Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain:-- Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.

'Hearken once more!

I will tell thee the mundane lore.

Older am I than thy numbers wot, Change I may, but I pa.s.s not.

Hitherto all things fast abide, And anch.o.r.ed in the tempest ride.

Trenchant time behoves to hurry All to yean and all to bury: All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive.

Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of G.o.d proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.

Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse, and sound, and light was none; And G.o.d said, "Throb!" and there was motion And the vast ma.s.s became vast ocean.

Onward and on, the eternal Pan, Who layeth the world's incessant plan, Halteth never in one shape, But forever doth escape, Like wave or flame, into new forms Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms.