By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls, One aspect to the desert and the lake.
It was her stern necessity: all things
Are of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one. Beheld far off, they part As God and devil; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. The specious panorama of a year But multiplies the image of a day, — A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; And universal Nature, through her vast And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, Repeats one note.1
From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying, 'This be thy portion, child; this chalice, Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw
my great arteries, — nor less, nor more.' All substances the cunning chemist Time Melts down into that liquor of my life,Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust. And whether I am angry or content, Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt,
All he distils into sidereal wine
And brims my little cup; heedless, alas! Of all he sheds how little it will hold, How much runs over on the desert sands. If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, And I uplift myself into its heaven,
The needs of the first sight absorb my blood, And all the following hours of the day Drag a ridiculous age.
To-day, when friends approach, and every hour Brings book, or starbright scroll of genius, The little cup will hold not a bead more, And all the costly liquor runs to waste; Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop
So to be husbanded for poorer days.
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills
My apprehension? Why seek Italy,
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn The nearest matters for a thousand days?
GIVE me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood, Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony, Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras, Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun- dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods Draw untold juices from the common earth, Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend, - O, that were much, and I could be a part Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.1
But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes,
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men, Were unitarians of the united world,
And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell, They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, And strangers to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers to the plant and to the mine. The injured elements say, 'Not in us;' And night and day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;' And haughtily return us stare for stare.3 For we invade them impiously for gain; We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes, The stunted trees look sick, the summer short, Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay, And nothing thrives to reach its natural term; And life, shorn of its venerable length, Even at its greatest space is a defeat, And dies in anger that it was a dupe; And, in its highest noon and wantonness, Is early frugal, like a beggar's child; Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims And prizes of ambition, checks its hand, Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped, Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.
BECAUSE I was content with these poor fields, Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, And found a home in haunts which others scorned, The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, And granted me the freedom of their state, And in their secret senate have prevailed
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