Society And Solitude

SEYD melted the days like cups of pearl,Served high and low, the lord and churl,Loved harebells nodding on a rock,A cabin hung with curling smoke,Ring of axe or hum of wheelOr gleam which use can paint on steel,And huts and tents; nor loved he lessStately lords in palaces,Princely women hard to please,Fenced by form and ceremony,Decked by courtly rites and dressAnd etiquette of gentilesse.But when the mate of the snow and wind,He left each civil scale behind:Him wood-gods fed with honey wildAnd of his memory beguiled.In caves and hollow trees he creptAnd near the wolf and panther slept.He stood before the tumbling mainWith joy too tense for sober brain;He shared…

We flee away from cities, but we bringThe best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.We praise the guide, we praise the forest life:But will we sacrifice our dear-bought loreOf books and arts and trained experiment,Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz ?O no, not we! . . . …. Witness the mute all hailThe joyful traveller gives, when on the vergeOf craggy Indian wilderness he hearsFrom a log cabin stream Beethoven’s notesOn the piano, played with master’s hand.Well done! ‘ he cries; ‘ the bear is kept at bay,The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire:All the fierce enemies, ague,…

I FRAMED his tongue to music,I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beautyAnd his heart the throne of Will. ART ALL departments of life at the present day – Trade, Politics, Letters, Science, or Religion – seem to feel, and to labor to express, the identity of their law. They are rays of one sun; they translate each into a new language the sense of the other. They are sublime when seen as emanations of a Necessity contradistinguished from the vulgar Fate by being instant and alive, and dissolving man as well as his works in its flowing beneficence. This influence is conspicuously visible in the…

For whom the Muses smile upon,And touch with soft persuasion,His words, like a storm-wind, can bringTerror and beauty on their wing;In his every syllableLurketh nature veritable;And though he speak in midnight dark, –In heaven no star, on earth no spark, –Yet before the listener’s eyeSwims the world in ecstasy,The forest waves, the morning breaks,The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons beAnd life pulsates in rock or tree. ELOQUENCE IT is the doctrine of the popular music-masters that whoever can speak can sing. So probably every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or, we boil at different degrees. One man…

I REACHED the middle of the mountUp which the incarnate soul must climb,And paused for them, and looked around,With me who walked through space and time.Five rosy boys with morning lightHad leaped from one fair mother’s arms,Fronted the sun with hope as bright,And greeted God with childhood’s psalms. Thou shalt make thy houseThe temple of a nation’s vows.Spirits of a higher strainWho sought thee once shall seek again.I detected many a godForth already on the road,Ancestors of beauty comeIn thy breast to make a home. DOMESTIC LIFE THE perfection of the providence for child-hood is easily acknowledged. The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough husks and…

To these menThe landscape is an armory of powers,Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars,Draw from each stratum its adapted useTo drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,And on cheap summit-levels of the snowSlide with the sledge to inaccessible woodsO’er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,They fight the elements with elements,And by the order in the field discloseThe order regnant in the…

DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days,Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,And marching single in an endless file,Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.To each they offer gifts after his will,Bread, kingdoms, stars and sky that holds them all.I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,Forgot my morning wishes, hastilyTook a few herbs and apples, and the DayTurned and departed silent. I, too late,Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. This passing moment is an edifice Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild OUR nineteenth century is the age of tools. They grew out of our structure. “Man is the meter of all things,” said Aristotle; “the hand is the instrument of instruments,…

O DAY of days when we can read!The reader and the book, – either without the other is naught.THAT book is good Which puts me in a working mood.Unless to Thought be added Will Apollo is an imbecile.BOOKS IT is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily found ; and the best are but records, and not the things recorded ; and certainly there is dilettanteism enough, and books that are merely neutral and do nothing for us. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates says : ” The ship-master walks in a modest garb near the sea, after bringing his passengers from Aegina or from Pontus; not thinking he has…

YET Saadi loved the race of men, –No churl, immured in cave or den;In bower and hallHe wants them all; But he has no companion;Come ten, or come a million, Good Saadi dwells alone . Too long shut in strait and few,Thinly dieted on dew,I will use the world, and sift it,To a thousand humors shift it. CLUBS WE are delicate machines, and require nice treatment to get from us the maximum of power and pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those that cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in pure oxygen, and Nature has tempered the air with nitrogen. So thought is the native air of…

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, Thou must,The youth replies, I can. PERIL around, all else appalling,Cannon in front and leaden rain,Him duty, through the clarion callingTo the van, called not in vain. COURAGE I OBSERVE that there are three qualities which conspicuously attract the wonder and reverence of mankind : – 1. Disinterestedness, as shown in indifference to the ordinary bribes and influences of conduct, – a purpose so sincere and generous that it cannot be tempted aside by any prospects of wealth or other private advantage. Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight, that they are incredulous…

OUR American people cannot be taxed with slowness in performance or in praising their performance. The earth is shaken by our engineries. We are feeling our youth and nerve and bone. We have the power of territory and of seacoast, and know the use of these. We count our census, we read our growing valuations, we survey our map, which becomes old in a year or two. Our eyes run approvingly along the lengthened lines of railroad and telegraph. We have gone nearest to the Pole. We have discovered the Antarctic continent. We interfere in Central and South America, at Canton and in Japan; we are adding to an already…

ONCE more,’ the old man cried, ye clouds,Airy turrets purple-piled,Which once my infancy beguiled,Beguile me with the wonted spell.I know ye skilful to convoyThe total freight of hope and joyInto rude and homely nooks,Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,On farmer’s byre, on pasture rude,And stony pathway to the wood.I care not if the pomps you showBe what they soothfast appear,Or if von realms in sunset glowBe bubbles of the atmosphere.And if it be to you allowedTo fool me with a shining cloud,So only new griefs are consoledBy new delights, as old by old,Frankly I will be your guest,Count your change and cheer the best.The world bath overmuch of pain,…