The Apology

THINK me not unkind and rude

That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,

For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

But 'tis figured in the flowers;

Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

Which I gather in a song.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Romany Girl

THE sun goes down, and with him takes

The coarseness of my por attire;

The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame

Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;

You captives of your air-tight halls,

Wear out in-doors your sickly days,

But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task,

And say it frankly without guile,

Then you are Gypsies in a mask,

And I the lady all the while.

If, on the heath, below the moon,

I court and play with paler blood,

Me false to mine dare whisper none,--

One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,

For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;

My swarthy tint is in the grain,

The rocks and forest knoww it real.

The wild air bloweth in out lungs,

The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,

The birds gave us our wily tongues,

The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high,

Nathless we read your fortunes true;

The stars may hide in the upper sky,

But without glass we fathom you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wealth

WHO shall tell what did befall,

Far away in time, when once,

Over the lifeless ball,

Hung idle stars and suns?

What god the element obeyed?

Wings of what wind the lichen bore,

Wafting the puny seeds of power,

Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade?

And well the primal pioneer

Knew the strong task to it assigned,

Patient through Heaven's enormous year

To build in matter home for mind.

From air the creeping centuries drew

The matted thicked low and wide,

This must the leaves of ages strew

The granite slab to clothe and hide,

Ere wheat can wave its golden pride.

What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled

(In dizzy aeons dim and mute

The reeling brain can ill compute)

Copper and iron, lead and gold?

What oldest star the fame can save

Of races perishing to pave

The planet with a floor of lime?

Dust is their pyramid and mole:

Who saw that ferns and palms were pressed

Under the trembling mountain's breast,

In the safe herbal of the coal?

But when the quarried means were piled,

All is waste and worthless, till

Arrives the wise selecting will,

And,out of slime and chaos, Wit

Draws the threads of fair and fit.

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts,

The shop of toil, the hall of arts;

Then flew the sail across the seas

To feed the North from tropic trees;

The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,

Where they were bid the rivers ran;

New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream,

Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam.

Then docks were built, and crops were stored,

And ingots added to the hoard.

But, though light-hearted man forget,

Remembering Matter pays her debt:

Still, though her motes and masses, draw

Electric thrills and ties of Law,

Which bind the strength of Nature wild

To the conscience of a child.

Ralph Waldo Emerson