Poems / Household Edition

     The mountain and the squirrel
     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;
     If I cannot carry forests on my back,
     Neither can you crack a nut.'

     INSCRIBED TO W.H. CHANNING

     Though loath to grieve
     The evil time's sole patriot,
     I cannot leave
     My honied thought
     For the priest's cant,
     Or statesman's rant.

     If I refuse
     My study for their politique,
     Which at the best is trick,
     The angry Muse
     Puts confusion in my brain.

     But who is he that prates
     Of the culture of mankind,
     Of better arts and life?
     Go, blindworm, go,
     Behold the famous States
     Harrying Mexico
     With rifle and with knife!

     Or who, with accent bolder,
     Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
     I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
     And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
     The jackals of the negro-holder.

     The God who made New Hampshire
     Taunted the lofty land
     With little men;—
     Small bat and wren
     House in the oak:—
     If earth-fire cleave
     The upheaved land, and bury the folk,
     The southern crocodile would grieve.
     Virtue palters; Right is hence;
     Freedom praised, but hid;
     Funeral eloquence
     Rattles the coffin-lid.

     What boots thy zeal,
     O glowing friend,
     That would indignant rend
     The northland from the south?
     Wherefore? to what good end?
     Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
     Would serve things still;—
     Things are of the snake.

     The horseman serves the horse,
     The neatherd serves the neat,
     The merchant serves the purse,
     The eater serves his meat;
     'T is the day of the chattel,
     Web to weave, and corn to grind;
     Things are in the saddle,
     And ride mankind.

     There are two laws discrete,
     Not reconciled,—
     Law for man, and law for thing;
     The last builds town and fleet,
     But it runs wild,
     And doth the man unking.

     'T is fit the forest fall,
     The steep be graded,
     The mountain tunnelled,
     The sand shaded,
     The orchard planted,
     The glebe tilled,
     The prairie granted,
     The steamer built.

     Let man serve law for man;
     Live for friendship, live for love,
     For truth's and harmony's behoof;
     The state may follow how it can,
     As Olympus follows Jove.

       Yet do not I implore
     The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,
     Nor bid the unwilling senator
     Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
     Every one to his chosen work;—
     Foolish hands may mix and mar;
     Wise and sure the issues are.
     Round they roll till dark is light,
     Sex to sex, and even to odd;—
     The over-god
     Who marries Right to Might,
     Who peoples, unpeoples,—
     He who exterminates
     Races by stronger races,
     Black by white faces,—
     Knows to bring honey
     Out of the lion;
     Grafts gentlest scion
     On pirate and Turk.

     The Cossack eats Poland,
     Like stolen fruit;
     Her last noble is ruined,
     Her last poet mute:
     Straight, into double band
     The victors divide;
     Half for freedom strike and stand;—
     The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

     Each the herald is who wrote
     His rank, and quartered his own coat.
     There is no king nor sovereign state
     That can fix a hero's rate;
     Each to all is venerable,
     Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
     Until he write, where all eyes rest,
     Slave or master on his breast.
     I saw men go up and down,
     In the country and the town,
     With this tablet on their neck,
     'Judgment and a judge we seek.'
     Not to monarchs they repair,
     Nor to learned jurist's chair;
     But they hurry to their peers,
     To their kinsfolk and their dears;
     Louder than with speech they pray,—
     'What am I? companion, say.'
     And the friend not hesitates
     To assign just place and mates;
     Answers not in word or letter,
     Yet is understood the better;
     Each to each a looking-glass,
     Reflects his figure that doth pass.
     Every wayfarer he meets
     What himself declared repeats,
     What himself confessed records,
     Sentences him in his words;
     The form is his own corporal form,
     And his thought the penal worm.
     Yet shine forever virgin minds,
     Loved by stars and purest winds,
     Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
     Have not hazarded their state;
     Disconcert the searching spy,
     Rendering to a curious eye
     The durance of a granite ledge.
     To those who gaze from the sea's edge
     It is there for benefit;
     It is there for purging light;
     There for purifying storms;
     And its depths reflect all forms;
     It cannot parley with the mean,—
     Pure by impure is not seen.
     For there's no sequestered grot,
     Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
     But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
     Daily stoops to harbor there.

     ÉTIENNE DE LA BOÉCE

     I serve you not, if you I follow,
     Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;
     And bend my fancy to your leading,
     All too nimble for my treading.
     When the pilgrimage is done,
     And we've the landscape overrun,
     I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
     And your heart is unsupported.
     Vainly valiant, you have missed
     The manhood that should yours resist,—
     Its complement; but if I could,
     In severe or cordial mood,
     Lead you rightly to my altar,
     Where the wisest Muses falter,
     And worship that world-warming spark
     Which dazzles me in midnight dark,
     Equalizing small and large,
     While the soul it doth surcharge,
     Till the poor is wealthy grown,
     And the hermit never alone,—
     The traveller and the road seem one
     With the errand to be done,—
     That were a man's and lover's part,
     That were Freedom's whitest chart.

     Why should I keep holiday
       When other men have none?
     Why but because, when these are gay,
       I sit and mourn alone?

     And why, when mirth unseals all tongues,
       Should mine alone be dumb?
     Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs,
       And now their hour is come.

     Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
     Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
     At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
     Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
     And loved so well a high behavior,
     In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
     Nobility more nobly to repay?
     O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

     The prosperous and beautiful
       To me seem not to wear
     The yoke of conscience masterful,
       Which galls me everywhere.

     I cannot shake off the god;
       On my neck he makes his seat;
     I look at my face in the glass,—
       My eyes his eyeballs meet.

     Enchanters! Enchantresses!
       Your gold makes you seem wise;
     The morning mist within your grounds
       More proudly rolls, more softly lies.

     Yet spake yon purple mountain,
       Yet said yon ancient wood,
     That Night or Day, that Love or Crime,
       Leads all souls to the Good.

     Long I followed happy guides,
     I could never reach their sides;
     Their step is forth, and, ere the day
     Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
     Keen my sense, my heart was young,
     Right good-will my sinews strung,
     But no speed of mine avails
     To hunt upon their shining trails.
     On and away, their hasting feet
     Make the morning proud and sweet;
     Flowers they strew,—I catch the scent;
     Or tone of silver instrument
     Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
     Yet I could never see their face.
     On eastern hills I see their smokes,
     Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
     I met many travellers
     Who the road had surely kept;
     They saw not my fine revellers,—
     These had crossed them while they slept.
     Some had heard their fair report,
     In the country or the court.
     Fleetest couriers alive
     Never yet could once arrive,
     As they went or they returned,
     At the house where these sojourned.
     Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
     Though they are not overtaken;
     In sleep their jubilant troop is near,—
     I tuneful voices overhear;
     It may be in wood or waste,—
     At unawares 't is come and past.
     Their near camp my spirit knows
     By signs gracious as rainbows.
     I thenceforward and long after
     Listen for their harp-like laughter,
     And carry in my heart, for days,
     Peace that hallows rudest ways.

     Seek not the spirit, if it hide
     Inexorable to thy zeal:
     Trembler, do not whine and chide:
     Art thou not also real?
     Stoop not then to poor excuse;
     Turn on the accuser roundly; say,
     'Here am I, here will I abide
     Forever to myself soothfast;
     Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay!'
     Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast,
     For only it can absolutely deal.

     Who gave thee, O Beauty,
     The keys of this breast,—
     Too credulous lover
     Of blest and unblest?
     Say, when in lapsed ages
     Thee knew I of old?
     Or what was the service
     For which I was sold?
     When first my eyes saw thee,
     I found me thy thrall,
     By magical drawings,
     Sweet tyrant of all!
     I drank at thy fountain
     False waters of thirst;
     Thou intimate stranger,
     Thou latest and first!
     Thy dangerous glances
     Make women of men;
     New-born, we are melting
     Into nature again.

     Lavish, lavish promiser,
     Nigh persuading gods to err!
     Guest of million painted forms,
     Which in turn thy glory warms!
     The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
     The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc,
     The swinging spider's silver line,
     The ruby of the drop of wine,
     The shining pebble of the pond,
     Thou inscribest with a bond,
     In thy momentary play,
     Would bankrupt nature to repay.

     Ah, what avails it
     To hide or to shun
     Whom the Infinite One
     Hath granted his throne?
     The heaven high over
     Is the deep's lover;
     The sun and sea,
     Informed by thee,
     Before me run
     And draw me on,
     Yet fly me still,
     As Fate refuses
     To me the heart Fate for me chooses.
     Is it that my opulent soul
     Was mingled from the generous whole;
     Sea-valleys and the deep of skies
     Furnished several supplies;
     And the sands whereof I'm made
     Draw me to them, self-betrayed?

     I turn the proud portfolio
     Which holds the grand designs
     Of Salvator, of Guercino,
     And Piranesi's lines.
     I hear the lofty paeans
     Of the masters of the shell,
     Who heard the starry music
     And recount the numbers well;
     Olympian bards who sung
     Divine Ideas below,
     Which always find us young
     And always keep us so.
     Oft, in streets or humblest places,
     I detect far-wandered graces,
     Which, from Eden wide astray,
     In lowly homes have lost their way.

     Thee gliding through the sea of form,
     Like the lightning through the storm,
     Somewhat not to be possessed,
     Somewhat not to be caressed,
     No feet so fleet could ever find,
     No perfect form could ever bind.
     Thou eternal fugitive,
     Hovering over all that live,
     Quick and skilful to inspire
     Sweet, extravagant desire,
     Starry space and lily-bell
     Filling with thy roseate smell,
     Wilt not give the lips to taste
     Of the nectar which thou hast.

     All that's good and great with thee
     Works in close conspiracy;
     Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
     To report thy features only,
     And the cold and purple morning
     Itself with thoughts of thee adorning;
     The leafy dell, the city mart,
     Equal trophies of thine art;
     E'en the flowing azure air
     Thou hast touched for my despair;
     And, if I languish into dreams,
     Again I meet the ardent beams.
     Queen of things! I dare not die
     In Being's deeps past ear and eye;
     Lest there I find the same deceiver
     And be the sport of Fate forever.
     Dread Power, but dear! if God thou be,
     Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me!

     Give all to love;
     Obey thy heart;
     Friends, kindred, days,
     Estate, good-fame,
     Plans, credit and the Muse,—
     Nothing refuse.

     'T is a brave master;
     Let it have scope:
     Follow it utterly,
     Hope beyond hope:
     High and more high
     It dives into noon,
     With wing unspent,
     Untold intent;
     But it is a god,
     Knows its own path
     And the outlets of the sky.

     It was never for the mean;
     It requireth courage stout.
     Souls above doubt,
     Valor unbending,
     It will reward,—
     They shall return
     More than they were,
     And ever ascending.

     Leave all for love;
     Yet, hear me, yet,
     One word more thy heart behoved,
     One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
     Keep thee to-day,
     To-morrow, forever,
     Free as an Arab
     Of thy beloved.

     Cling with life to the maid;
     But when the surprise,
     First vague shadow of surmise
     Flits across her bosom young,
     Of a joy apart from thee,
     Free be she, fancy-free;
     Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
     Nor the palest rose she flung
     From her summer diadem.

     Though thou loved her as thyself,
     As a self of purer clay,
     Though her parting dims the day,
     Stealing grace from all alive;
     Heartily know,
     When half-gods go.
     The gods arrive.

     The green grass is bowing,
       The morning wind is in it;
     'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
       Though it change every minute.

     'T is a tune of the Spring;
       Every year plays it over
     To the robin on the wing,
       And to the pausing lover.

     O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
       Goes light the nimble zephyr;
     The Flowers—tiny sect of Shakers—
       Worship him ever.

     Hark to the winning sound!
       They summon thee, dearest,—
     Saying, 'We have dressed for thee the ground,
       Nor yet thou appearest.

     'O hasten;' 't is our time,
       Ere yet the red Summer
     Scorch our delicate prime,
       Loved of bee,—the tawny hummer.

     'O pride of thy race!
       Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
     If our brief tribe miss thy face,
       We poor New England flowers.

     'Fairest, choose the fairest members
       Of our lithe society;
     June's glories and September's
       Show our love and piety.

     'Thou shalt command us all,—
       April's cowslip, summer's clover,
     To the gentian in the fall,
       Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

     'O come, then, quickly come!
       We are budding, we are blowing;
     And the wind that we perfume
       Sings a tune that's worth the knowing.'

     And Ellen, when the graybeard years
       Have brought us to life's evening hour,
     And all the crowded Past appears
       A tiny scene of sun and shower,

     Then, if I read the page aright
       Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot,
     Thyself shalt own the page was bright,
       Well that we loved, woe had we not,

     When Mirth is dumb and Flattery's fled,
       And mute thy music's dearest tone,
     When all but Love itself is dead
       And all but deathless Reason gone.

     O fair and stately maid, whose eyes
     Were kindled in the upper skies
       At the same torch that lighted mine;
     For so I must interpret still
     Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
       A sympathy divine.

     Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
     Features that seem at heart my own;
       Nor fear those watchful sentinels,
     Who charm the more their glance forbids,
     Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,
       With fire that draws while it repels.

     WRITTEN BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER SHORTLY BEFORE
     HER MARRIAGE TO MR. EMERSON

     Love scatters oil
       On Life's dark sea,
     Sweetens its toil—
       Our helmsman he.

     Around him hover
       Odorous clouds;
     Under this cover
       His arrows he shrouds.

     The cloud was around me,
       I knew not why
     Such sweetness crowned me.
       While Time shot by.

     No pain was within,
       But calm delight,
     Like a world without sin,
       Or a day without night.

     The shafts of the god
       Were tipped with down,
     For they drew no blood,
       And they knit no frown.

     I knew of them not
       Until Cupid laughed loud,
     And saying "You're caught!"
       Flew off in the cloud.

     O then I awoke,
       And I lived but to sigh,
     Till a clear voice spoke,—
       And my tears are dry.

     BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER

     Why lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year;
     Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear;
     Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow,
     Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow?

     Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray?
     Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day.
     The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on;
     There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone.

     O Violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and die,
     When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes sigh;
     When Winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting Spring,
     And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing.

     I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet;
     Her morning sun shone bright and calmly purely set;
     When the violets were in their shrouds, and Summer in its pride,
     She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died.

     Your picture smiles as first it smiled;
       The ring you gave is still the same;
     Your letter tells, O changing child!
       No tidings since it came.

     Give me an amulet
       That keeps intelligence with you,—
     Red when you love, and rosier red,
       And when you love not, pale and blue.

     Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
       Can certify possession;
     Torments me still the fear that love
       Died in its last expression.

     Thine eyes still shined for me, though far
       I lonely roved the land or sea:
     As I behold yon evening star,
       Which yet beholds not me.

     This morn I climbed the misty hill
       And roamed the pastures through;
     How danced thy form before my path
       Amidst the deep-eyed dew!

     When the redbird spread his sable wing,
       And showed his side of flame;
     When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
       In both I read thy name.

     The sense of the world is short,—
     Long and various the report,—
       To love and be beloved;
     Men and gods have not outlearned it;
     And, how oft soe'er they've turned it,
       Not to be improved.

     On a mound an Arab lay,
     And sung his sweet regrets
     And told his amulets:
     The summer bird
     His sorrow heard,
     And, when he heaved a sigh profound,
     The sympathetic swallow swept the ground.

     'If it be, as they said, she was not fair,
     Beauty's not beautiful to me,
     But sceptred genius, aye inorbed,
     Culminating in her sphere.
     This Hermione absorbed
     The lustre of the land and ocean,
     Hills and islands, cloud and tree,
     In her form and motion.

     'I ask no bauble miniature,
     Nor ringlets dead
     Shorn from her comely head,
     Now that morning not disdains
     Mountains and the misty plains
     Her colossal portraiture;
     They her heralds be,
     Steeped in her quality,
     And singers of her fame
     Who is their Muse and dame.

     'Higher, dear swallows! mind not what I say.
     Ah! heedless how the weak are strong,
     Say, was it just,
     In thee to frame, in me to trust,
     Thou to the Syrian couldst belong?

     'I am of a lineage
     That each for each doth fast engage;
     In old Bassora's schools, I seemed
     Hermit vowed to books and gloom,—
     Ill-bestead for gay bridegroom.
     I was by thy touch redeemed;
     When thy meteor glances came,
     We talked at large of worldly fate,
     And drew truly every trait.

     'Once I dwelt apart,
     Now I live with all;
     As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side
     Seems, by the traveller espied,
     A door into the mountain heart,
     So didst thou quarry and unlock
     Highways for me through the rock.

     'Now, deceived, thou wanderest
     In strange lands unblest;
     And my kindred come to soothe me.
     Southwind is my next of blood;
     He is come through fragrant wood,
     Drugged with spice from climates warm,
     And in every twinkling glade,
     And twilight nook,
     Unveils thy form.
     Out of the forest way
     Forth paced it yesterday;
     And when I sat by the watercourse,
     Watching the daylight fade,
     It throbbed up from the brook.

     'River and rose and crag and bird,
     Frost and sun and eldest night,
     To me their aid preferred,
     To me their comfort plight;—
     "Courage! we are thine allies,
     And with this hint be wise,—
     The chains of kind
     The distant bind;
     Deed thou doest she must do,
     Above her will, be true;
     And, in her strict resort
     To winds and waterfalls
     And autumn's sunlit festivals,
     To music, and to music's thought,
     Inextricably bound,
     She shall find thee, and be found.
     Follow not her flying feet;
     Come to us herself to meet."'

     I. THE INITIAL LOVE

     Venus, when her son was lost,
     Cried him up and down the coast,
     In hamlets, palaces and parks,
     And told the truant by his marks,—
     Golden curls, and quiver and bow.
     This befell how long ago!
     Time and tide are strangely changed,
     Men and manners much deranged:
     None will now find Cupid latent
     By this foolish antique patent.
     He came late along the waste,
     Shod like a traveller for haste;
     With malice dared me to proclaim him,
     That the maids and boys might name him.

     Boy no more, he wears all coats,
     Frocks and blouses, capes, capotes;
     He bears no bow, or quiver, or wand,
     Nor chaplet on his head or hand.
     Leave his weeds and heed his eyes,—
     All the rest he can disguise.
     In the pit of his eye's a spark
     Would bring back day if it were dark;
     And, if I tell you all my thought,
     Though I comprehend it not,
     In those unfathomable orbs
     Every function he absorbs;
     Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
     And write, and reason, and compute,
     And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
     And whine, and flatter, and regret,
     And kiss, and couple, and beget,
     By those roving eyeballs bold.

     Undaunted are their courages,
     Right Cossacks in their forages;
     Fleeter they than any creature,—
     They are his steeds, and not his feature;
     Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting,
     Restless, predatory, hasting;
     And they pounce on other eyes
     As lions on their prey;
     And round their circles is writ,
     Plainer than the day,
     Underneath, within, above,—
     Love—love—love—love.
     He lives in his eyes;
     There doth digest, and work, and spin,
     And buy, and sell, and lose, and win;
     He rolls them with delighted motion,
     Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean.
     Yet holds he them with tautest rein,
     That they may seize and entertain
     The glance that to their glance opposes,
     Like fiery honey sucked from roses.
     He palmistry can understand,
     Imbibing virtue by his hand
     As if it were a living root;
     The pulse of hands will make him mute;
     With all his force he gathers balms
     Into those wise, thrilling palms.

     Cupid is a casuist,
     A mystic and a cabalist,—
     Can your lurking thought surprise,
     And interpret your device.
     He is versed in occult science,
     In magic and in clairvoyance,
     Oft he keeps his fine ear strained,
     And Reason on her tiptoe pained
     For aëry intelligence,
     And for strange coincidence.
     But it touches his quick heart
     When Fate by omens takes his part,
     And chance-dropped hints from Nature's sphere
     Deeply soothe his anxious ear.

     Heralds high before him run;
     He has ushers many a one;
     He spreads his welcome where he goes,
     And touches all things with his rose.
     All things wait for and divine him,—
     How shall I dare to malign him,
     Or accuse the god of sport?
     I must end my true report,
     Painting him from head to foot,
     In as far as I took note,
     Trusting well the matchless power
     Of this young-eyed emperor
     Will clear his fame from every cloud
     With the bards and with the crowd.

     He is wilful, mutable,
     Shy, untamed, inscrutable,
     Swifter-fashioned than the fairies.
     Substance mixed of pure contraries;
     His vice some elder virtue's token,
     And his good is evil-spoken.
     Failing sometimes of his own,
     He is headstrong and alone;
     He affects the wood and wild,
     Like a flower-hunting child;
     Buries himself in summer waves,
     In trees, with beasts, in mines and caves,
     Loves nature like a hornèd cow,
     Bird, or deer, or caribou.

     Shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses!
     He has a total world of wit;
     O how wise are his discourses!
     But he is the arch-hypocrite,
     And, through all science and all art,
     Seeks alone his counterpart.
     He is a Pundit of the East,
     He is an augur and a priest,
     And his soul will melt in prayer,
     But word and wisdom is a snare;
     Corrupted by the present toy
     He follows joy, and only joy.
     There is no mask but he will wear;
     He invented oaths to swear;
     He paints, he carves, he chants, he prays,
     And holds all stars in his embrace.
     He takes a sovran privilege
     Not allowed to any liege;
     For Cupid goes behind all law,
     And right into himself does draw;
     For he is sovereignly allied,—
     Heaven's oldest blood flows in his side,—
     And interchangeably at one
     With every king on every throne,
     That no god dare say him nay,
     Or see the fault, or seen betray;
     He has the Muses by the heart,
     And the stern Parcae on his part.

     His many signs cannot be told;
     He has not one mode, but manifold,
     Many fashions and addresses,
     Piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses.
     He will preach like a friar,
     And jump like Harlequin;
     He will read like a crier,
     And fight like a Paladin.
     Boundless is his memory;
     Plans immense his term prolong;
     He is not of counted age,
     Meaning always to be young.
     And his wish is intimacy,
     Intimater intimacy,
     And a stricter privacy;
     The impossible shall yet be done,
     And, being two, shall still be one.
     As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,
     Then runs into a wave again,
     So lovers melt their sundered selves,
     Yet melted would be twain.

     Man was made of social earth,
     Child and brother from his birth,
     Tethered by a liquid cord
     Of blood through veins of kindred poured.
     Next his heart the fireside band
     Of mother, father, sister, stand;
     Names from awful childhood heard
     Throbs of a wild religion stirred;—
     Virtue, to love, to hate them, vice;
     Till dangerous Beauty came, at last,
     Till Beauty came to snap all ties;
     The maid, abolishing the past,
     With lotus wine obliterates
     Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,
     And, by herself, supplants alone
     Friends year by year more inly known.
     When her calm eyes opened bright,
     All else grew foreign in their light.
     It was ever the self-same tale,
     The first experience will not fail;
     Only two in the garden walked,
     And with snake and seraph talked.

     Close, close to men,
     Like undulating layer of air,
     Right above their heads,
     The potent plain of Daemons spreads.
     Stands to each human soul its own,
     For watch and ward and furtherance,
     In the snares of Nature's dance;
     And the lustre and the grace
     To fascinate each youthful heart,
     Beaming from its counterpart,
     Translucent through the mortal covers,
     Is the Daemon's form and face.
     To and fro the Genius hies,—
     A gleam which plays and hovers
     Over the maiden's head,
     And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.
     Unknown, albeit lying near,
     To men, the path to the Daemon sphere;
     And they that swiftly come and go
     Leave no track on the heavenly snow.
     Sometimes the airy synod bends,
     And the mighty choir descends,
     And the brains of men thenceforth,
     In crowded and in still resorts,
     Teem with unwonted thoughts:
     As, when a shower of meteors
     Cross the orbit of the earth,
     And, lit by fringent air,
     Blaze near and far,
     Mortals deem the planets bright
     Have slipped their sacred bars,
     And the lone seaman all the night
     Sails, astonished, amid stars.

     Beauty of a richer vein,
     Graces of a subtler strain,
     Unto men these moonmen lend,
     And our shrinking sky extend.
     So is man's narrow path
     By strength and terror skirted;
     Also (from the song the wrath
     Of the Genii be averted!
     The Muse the truth uncolored speaking)
     The Daemons are self-seeking:
     Their fierce and limitary will
     Draws men to their likeness still.
     The erring painter made Love blind,—
     Highest Love who shines on all;
     Him, radiant, sharpest-sighted god,
     None can bewilder;
     Whose eyes pierce
     The universe,
     Path-finder, road-builder,
     Mediator, royal giver;
     Rightly seeing, rightly seen,
     Of joyful and transparent mien.
     'T is a sparkle passing
     From each to each, from thee to me,
     To and fro perpetually;
     Sharing all, daring all,
     Levelling, displacing
     Each obstruction, it unites
     Equals remote, and seeming opposites.
     And ever and forever Love
     Delights to build a road:
     Unheeded Danger near him strides,
     Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
     But Cupid wears another face,
     Born into Daemons less divine:
     His roses bleach apace,
     His nectar smacks of wine.
     The Daemon ever builds a wall,
     Himself encloses and includes,
     Solitude in solitudes:
     In like sort his love doth fall.
     He doth elect
     The beautiful and fortunate,
     And the sons of intellect,
     And the souls of ample fate,
     Who the Future's gates unbar,—
     Minions of the Morning Star.
     In his prowess he exults,
     And the multitude insults.
     His impatient looks devour
     Oft the humble and the poor;
     And, seeing his eye glare,
     They drop their few pale flowers,
     Gathered with hope to please,
     Along the mountain towers,—
     Lose courage, and despair.
     He will never be gainsaid,—
     Pitiless, will not be stayed;
     His hot tyranny
     Burns up every other tie.
     Therefore comes an hour from Jove
     Which his ruthless will defies,
     And the dogs of Fate unties.
     Shiver the palaces of glass;
     Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls,
     Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt
     Secure as in the zodiac's belt;
     And the galleries and halls,
     Wherein every siren sung,
     Like a meteor pass.
     For this fortune wanted root
     In the core of God's abysm,—
     Was a weed of self and schism;
     And ever the Daemonic Love
     Is the ancestor of wars
     And the parent of remorse.

     But God said,
     'I will have a purer gift;
     There is smoke in the flame;
     New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift,
     And love without a name.
     Fond children, ye desire
     To please each other well;
     Another round, a higher,
     Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
     And selfish preference forbear;
     And in right deserving,
     And without a swerving
     Each from your proper state,
     Weave roses for your mate.

     'Deep, deep are loving eyes,
     Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet;
     And the point is paradise,
     Where their glances meet:
     Their reach shall yet be more profound,
     And a vision without bound:
     The axis of those eyes sun-clear
     Be the axis of the sphere:
     So shall the lights ye pour amain
     Go, without check or intervals,
     Through from the empyrean walls
     Unto the same again.'

     Higher far into the pure realm,
     Over sun and star,
     Over the flickering Daemon film,
     Thou must mount for love;
     Into vision where all form
     In one only form dissolves;
     In a region where the wheel
     On which all beings ride
     Visibly revolves;
     Where the starred, eternal worm
     Girds the world with bound and term;
     Where unlike things are like;
     Where good and ill,
     And joy and moan,
     Melt into one.

     There Past, Present, Future, shoot
     Triple blossoms from one root;
     Substances at base divided,
     In their summits are united;
     There the holy essence rolls,
     One through separated souls;
     And the sunny Aeon sleeps
     Folding Nature in its deeps,
     And every fair and every good,
     Known in part, or known impure,
     To men below,
     In their archetypes endure.
     The race of gods,
     Or those we erring own,
     Are shadows flitting up and down
     In the still abodes.
     The circles of that sea are laws
     Which publish and which hide the cause.

     Pray for a beam
     Out of that sphere,
     Thee to guide and to redeem.
     O, what a load
     Of care and toil,
     By lying use bestowed,
     From his shoulders falls who sees
     The true astronomy,
     The period of peace.
     Counsel which the ages kept
     Shall the well-born soul accept.
     As the overhanging trees
     Fill the lake with images,—
     As garment draws the garment's hem,
     Men their fortunes bring with them.
     By right or wrong,
     Lands and goods go to the strong.
     Property will brutely draw
     Still to the proprietor;
     Silver to silver creep and wind,
     And kind to kind.

     Nor less the eternal poles
     Of tendency distribute souls.
     There need no vows to bind
     Whom not each other seek, but find.
     They give and take no pledge or oath,—
     Nature is the bond of both:
     No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,—
     Their noble meanings are their pawns.
     Plain and cold is their address,
     Power have they for tenderness;
     And, so thoroughly is known
     Each other's counsel by his own,
     They can parley without meeting;
     Need is none of forms of greeting;
     They can well communicate
     In their innermost estate;
     When each the other shall avoid,
     Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

     Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
     Do these celebrate their loves:
     Not by jewels, feasts and savors,
     Not by ribbons or by favors,
     But by the sun-spark on the sea,
     And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
     The soothing lapse of morn to mirk,
     And the cheerful round of work.
     Their cords of love so public are,
     They intertwine the farthest star:
     The throbbing sea, the quaking earth,
     Yield sympathy and signs of mirth;
     Is none so high, so mean is none,
     But feels and seals this union;
     Even the fell Furies are appeased,
     The good applaud, the lost are eased.

     Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,
     Bound for the just, but not beyond;
     Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
     Of self in other still preferred,
     But they have heartily designed
     The benefit of broad mankind.
     And they serve men austerely,
     After their own genius, clearly,
     Without a false humility;
     For this is Love's nobility,—
     Not to scatter bread and gold,
     Goods and raiment bought and sold;
     But to hold fast his simple sense,
     And speak the speech of innocence,
     And with hand and body and blood,
     To make his bosom-counsel good.
     He that feeds men serveth few;
     He serves all who dares be true.