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The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson ...: Poems
The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson Poems Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: We fool and prate ; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense The constant mountain doth dispense ; Shedding on all its snows a... more »nd leaves, One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, O watchman tall, Our towns and races grow and fall, And imagest the stable good For which we all our lifetime grope, In shifting form the formless mind, And though the substance us elude, We in thee the shadow find. Thou, in our astronomy An opaquer star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,- By circumspect ambition, By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous,— Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator ! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, Thou dost succour and remede The shortness of our days, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth. FABLE. mountain and the squirrel I Had a quarrel; And the former called the latter " Little Prig- Bun replied, " You are doubtless very big ; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track ; Talents differ ; all is well and wisely put; ti I cannot carry forests on my back, /Neither can you crack a nut." INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING. '-pHOUGH loth to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant. Cul wnu is lie uia.1 pia/ies Of the culture of mankind, Of better arts and life ? Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famo...« less