He spoke, and words more soft than rain His action won such reverence sweet CA CULTURE. AN rules or tutors educate He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. A FRIENDSHIP. RUDDY drop of manly blood The world uncertain comes and goes, I fancied he was fled, And, after many a year, Glowed unexhausted kindliness, Like daily sunrise there. My careful heart was free again, O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears Me too thy nobleness has taught The fountains of my hidden life WA BEAUTY. AS never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone, But hovered gleaming and was gone. Beauty chased he everywhere, In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. He smote the lake to feed his eye With the beryl beam of the broken wave; He flung in pebbles well to hear The moment's music which they gave. Oft pealed for him a lofty tone From nodding pole and belting zone. He heard a voice none else could hear From centred and from errant sphere. The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. In dens of passion, and pits of woe, He saw strong Eros struggling through, To sun the dark and solve the curse, And beam to the bounds of the universe. While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, How spread their lures for him in vain Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread. MANNERS. GRACE, Beauty, and Caprice Build this golden portal; Graceful women, chosen men, Their sweet and lofty countenance He need not go to them, their forms He looketh seldom in their face, Too weak to win, too fond to shun The much-deceived Endymion G ART. IVE to barrows, trays, and pans Bring the moonlight into noon Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet; The past restore, the day adorn, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables, His children fed at heavenly tables. 'Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate, Teach him on these as stairs to climb, SPIRITUAL LAWS. HE living Heaven thy prayers respect, TH Quarrying man's rejected hours, And, by the famous might that lurks Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boil; UNITY. PACE is ample, east and west, Cannot travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Surcharged and sultry with a power WORSHIP. HIS is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows; He to captivity was sold, But him no prison-bars would hold : Threading dark ways, arriving late, T NATURE.1 HE rounded world is fair to see, Though baffled seers cannot impart Throb time with Nature's throbbing breast, "The following pieces are, like those preceding them in this section headings to the Essays; but while all up to "Worship" were included by Emerson in the volume of 1867, the rest were never reprinted b him in ary book of his verses. No apology is needed for giving them here.-ED. |