Costlier far than wine or oil.

There's a berry blue and gold,-
Autumn-ripe, its juices hold

Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight.

I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat, and juice to drain;
So the coinage of his brain

Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars."
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the Dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South Cove and City Wharf.
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath, —
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow:
Open the daunting map beneath,—
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city-tops a glimmering haze.

I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;

Our sumptuous indigence,

O barren mound, thy plenties fill!
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 and 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 opaker 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 succor and remede

The shortness of our days,

And promise, on thy Founder's truth,

Long morrow to this mortal youth.'

FABLE

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.'

Our sumptuous indigence,

O barren mound, thy plenties fill!
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 and 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 opaker 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 succor and remede

The shortness of our days,

And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.'

FABLE

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.'