Ralph Waldo Emerson
¶[1803-1882}
763 Good - by E
¶GOOD - BY E , proud world! I'm going home:
¶Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.Long through thy weary crowds I roam;[1242]A river-ark on the ocean brine,Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;But now, proud world! I'm going home.
¶Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;To Grandeur with his wise grimace;To upstart Wealth's averted eye;To supple Office, low and high;To crowded halls, to court and street;To frozen hearts and hasting feet;To those who go, and those who come;Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.
¶I am going to my own hearth-stone,Bosomed in yon green hills alone,—A secret nook in a pleasant land,Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;Where arches green, the livelong day,Echo the blackbird's roundelay,And vulgar feet have never trodA spot that is sacred to thought and God.
¶O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;And when I am stretched beneath the pines,Where the evening star so holy shines,I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,At the sophist schools and the learned clan;For what are they all, in their high conceit,When man in the bush with God may meet?
764 the Apology
¶THINK me not unkind and rudeThat I walk alone in grove and glen;I go to the god of the woodTo fetch his word to men.
¶Tax not my sloth that IFold my arms beside the brook;Each cloud that floated in the skyWrites a letter in my book.[1243]Chide me not, laborious band,For the idle flowers I brought;Every aster in my handGoes home loaded with a thought.
¶There was never mysteryBut 'tis figured in the flowers;Was never secret historyBut birds tell it in the bowers.
¶One harvest from thy fieldHomeward brought the oxen strong;A second crop thine acres yield,Which I gather in a song.
765 Brahma
¶I F the red slayer think he slays,Or if the slain think he is slain,They know not well the subtle waysI keep, and pass, and turn again.
¶Far or forgot to me is near;Shadow and sunlight are the same;The vanished gods to me appear;And one to me are shame and fame.
¶They reckon ill who leave me out;When me they fly, I am the wings;I am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
¶The strong gods pine for my abode,And pine in vain the sacred Seven;But thou, meek lover of the good!Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
766 Days
¶DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days,
¶Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,And marching single in an endless file,[1244]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.
Give All to Love
¶GIVE all to love;
¶Obey thy heart;Friends, kindred, days,Estate, good-fame,Plans, credit and the Muse,—Nothing refuse.
¶'Tis a brave master;Let it have scope:Follow it utterly,Hope beyond hope:High and more highIt dives into noon,With wing unspent,Untold intent;But it is a god,Knows its own pathAnd the outlets of the sky.
¶It was never for the mean;It requireth courage stout.Souls above doubt,Valor unbending,It will reward,—•They shall returnMore than they were,And ever ascending.
¶Leave all for love;Yet, hear me, yet,[1245]One word more thy heart behoved,One pulse more of firm endeavor,—Keep thee to-day,To-morrow, forever,Free as an ArabOf thy beloved.
¶Cling with life to the maid;But when the surprise,First vague shadow of surmiseFlits across her bosom young,Of a joy apart from thee,Free be she, fancy-free;Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,Nor the palest rose she flungFrom her summer diadem.
¶Though thou loved her as thyself,As a self of purer clay,Though her parting dims the day,Stealing grace from all alive;Heartily know,When half-gods go,The gods arrive.
768 Concord Hymn
¶Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837B Y the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stoodAnd fired the shot heard round the world.
¶The foe long since in silence slept;Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;And Time the ruined bridge has sweptDown the dark stream which seaward creeps.
¶On this green bank, by this soft stream,We set to-day a votive stone;That memory may their deed redeem,When, like our sires, our sons are gone.[1246]Spirit, that made those heroes dareTo die, and leave their children free,Bid Time and Nature gently spareThe shaft we raise to them and thee.
The Humble - Be E
¶BURLY , dozing humble-bee,
¶Where thou art is clime for me.Let them sail for Porto Rique,Far-off heats through seas to seek;I will follow thee alone,Thou animated torrid-zone!Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,Let me chase thy waving lines;Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,Singing over shrubs and vines.
¶Insect lover of the sun,Joy of thy dominion!Sailor of the atmosphere;Swimmer through the waves of air;Voyager of light and noon;Epicurean of June;Wait, I prithee, till I comeWithin earshot of thy hum,—All without is martyrdom.
¶When the south wind, in May days,With a net of shining hazeSilvers the horizon wall,And with softness touching all,Tints the human countenanceWith a color of romance,And infusing subtle heats,Turns the sod to violets,Thou, in sunny solitudes,Rover of the underwoods,The green silence dost displaceWith thy mellow, breezy bass.[1247]Hot midsummer's petted crone,Sweet to me thy drowsy toneTells of coundess sunny hours,Long days, and solid banks of flowers;Of gulfs of sweetness without boundIn Indian wildernesses found;Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.Aught unsavory or uncleanHath my insect never seen;But violets and bilberry bells,Maple-sap and daffodels,Grass with green flag half-mast high,Succory to match the sky,Columbine with horn of honey,Scented fern, and agrimony,Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongueAnd brier-roses, dwelt among;All beside was unknown waste,All was picture as he passed.Wiser far than human seer,Yellow-breeched philosopher!Seeing only what is fair,Sipping only what is sweet,Thou dost mock at fate and care,Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.When the fierce northwestern blastCools sea and land so far and fast,Thou already slumberest deep;Woe and want thou canst outsleep;Want and woe, which torture us,Thy sleep makes ridiculous.
770 the Problem
¶I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;I love a prophet of the soul;And on my heart monastic aislesFall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;Yet not for all his faith can seeWould I that cowled churchman be.[1248]Why should the vest on him allure,Which I could not on me endure?
¶Not from a vain or shallow thoughtHis awful Jove young Phidias brought;Never from lips of cunning fellThe thrilling Delphic oracle;Out from the heart of nature rolledThe burdens of the Bible old;The litanies of nations came,Like the volcano's tongue of flame,Up from the burning core below,—The canticles of love and woe:The hand that rounded Peter's domeAnd groined the aisles of Christian RomeWrought in a sad sincerity:Himself from God he could not free;He builded better than he knew;—The conscious stone to beauty grew.Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nestOf leaves, and feathers from her breast?Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,Painting with morn each annual cell?Or how the sacred pine-tree addsTo her old leaves new myriads?Such and so grew these holy piles,Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,As the best gem upon her zone,And Morning opes with haste her lidsTo gaze upon the Pyramids;O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,As on its friends, with kindred eye;For out of Thought's interior sphereThese wonders rose to upper air;And Nature gladly gave them place,Adopted them into her race,And granted them an equal dateWith Andes and with Ararat.These temples grew as grows the grass;[1249]Art might obey, but not surpass.The passive Master lent his handTo the vast soul that o'er him planned;And the same power that reared the shrineBestrode the tribes that knelt within.Ever the fiery PentecostGirds with one flame the countless host,Trances the heart through chanting choirs,And through the priest the mind inspires.The word unto the prophet spokenWas writ on tables yet unbroken;The word by seers or sibyls told,In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,Still floats upon the morning wind,Still whispers to the willing mind.One accent of the Holy GhostThe heedless world hath never lost.I know what say the fathers wise,The Book itself before me lies,Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,And he who blent both in his line,The younger Golden Lips or mines,Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.His words are music in my ear,I see his cowled portrait dear;And yet, for all his faith could see,I would not the good bishop be.
WoodnotesI
¶iWHEN the pine tosses its conesTo the song of its waterfall tones,Who speeds to the woodland walks?To birds and trees who talks?Caesar of his leafy Rome,There the poet is at home.He goes to the river-side,—Not hook nor line hath he;[1250]He stands in the meadows wide,—Nor gun nor scythe to see.Sure some god his eye enchants:What he knows nobody wants.In the wood he travels glad,Without better fortune had,Melancholy without bad.Knowledge this man prizes bestSeems fantastic to the rest:Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,Boughs on which the wild bees settle,Tints that spot the violet's petal,Why Nature loves the number five,And why the star-form she repeats:Lover of all things alive,Wonderer at all he meets,Wonderer chiefly at himself,Who can tell him what he is?Or how meet in human elfComing and past eternities?
¶2
¶And such I knew, a forest seer,A minstrel of the natural year,Foreteller of the vernal ides,Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,A lover true, who knew by heartEach joy the mountain dales impart;It seemed that Nature could not raiseA plant in any secret place,In quaking bog, on snowy hill,Beneath the grass that shades the rill,Under the snow, between the rocks,In damp fields known to bird and fox,But he would come in the very hourIt opened in its virgin bower,As if a sunbeam showed the place,And tell its long-descended race.It seemed as if the breezes brought him,[1251]It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;As if by secret sight he knewWhere, in far fields, the orchis grew.Many haps fall in the fieldSeldom seen by wishful eyes,But all her shows did Nature yield,To please and win this pilgrim wise.He saw the partridge drum in the woods;He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;He found the tawny thrushes' broods;And the shy hawk did wait for him;What others did at distance hear,And guessed within the thicket's gloom,Was shown to this philosopher,And at his bidding seemed to come.
¶3In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gangWhere from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereonThe all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls,—One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,Declares the close of its green century.Low lies the plant to whose creation wentSweet influence from every element;Whose living towers the years conspired to build,Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,He roamed, content alike with man and beast.Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;There the red morning touched him with its light.Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,[1252]So long he roved at will the boundless shade.The timid it concerns to ask their way,And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,To make no step until the event is known,And ills to come as evils past bemoan.Not so the wise; no coward watch he keepsTo spy what danger on his pathway creeps;Go where he will, the wise man is at home,His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his roadBy God's own light illumined and foreshowed.
¶4'Twas one of the charmed daysWhen the genius of God doth flow;The wind may alter twenty ways,A tempest cannot blow;It may blow north, it still is warm;Or south, it still is clear;Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;Or west, no thunder fear.The musing peasant, lowly great,Beside the forest water sate;The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grownComposed the network of his throne;The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,Was burnished to a floor of glass,Painted with shadows green and proudOf the tree and of the cloud.He was the heart of all the scene;On him the sun looked more serene;To hill and cloud his face was known,—It seemed the likeness of their own;They knew by secret sympathyThe public child of earth and sky.'You ask,' he said, 'what guideMe through trackless thickets led,Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide,I found the water's bed.The watercourses were my guide;[1253]I travelled grateful by their side,Or through their channel dry;They led me through the thicket damp,Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,Through beds of granite cut my road,And their resistless friendship showed.The falling waters led me,The foodful waters fed me,And brought me to the lowest land,Unerring to the ocean sand.The moss upon the forest barkWas pole-star when the night was dark;The purple berries in the woodSupplied me necessary food;For Nature ever faithful isTo such as trust her faithfulness.When the forest shall mislead me,When the night and morning lie,When sea and land refuse to feed me,'Twill be time enough to die;Then will yet my mother yieldA pillow in her greenest field,Nor the June flowers scorn to coverThe clay of their departed lover.'
WoodnotesII
¶As sunbeams stream through liberal spaceAnd nothing jostle or displace,So waved the pine-tree through my thoughtAnd fanned the dreams it never brought.
¶'Whether is better, the gift or the donor?Come to me,'Quoth the pine-tree,'I am the giver of honor.My garden is the cloven rock,And my manure the snow;And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,In summer's scorching glow.[1254]He is great who can live by me:The rough and bearded foresterIs better than the lord;God fills the scrip and canister,Sin piles the loaded board.The lord is the peasant that was,The peasant the lord that shall be;The lord is hay, the peasant grass,One dry, and one the living tree.Who liveth by the ragged pineFoundeth a heroic line;Who liveth in the palace hallWaneth fast and spendeth all.He goes to my savage haunts,With his chariot and his care;My twilight realm he disenchants,And finds his prison there.
¶'What prizes the town and the tower?Only what the pine-tree yields;Sinew that subdued the fields;The wild-eyed boy, who in the woodsChants his hymn to hills and floods,Whom the city's poisoning spleenMade not pale, or fat, or lean;Whom the rain and the wind purgeth,Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth,In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth,In whose feet the lion rushethIron arms, and iron mould,That know not fear, fatigue, or cold.I give my rafters to his boat,My billets to his boiler's throat,And I will swim the ancient seaTo float my child to victory,And grant to dwellers with the pineDominion o'er the palm and vine.Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,Unnerves his strength, invites his end.Cut a bough from my parent stem,[1255]And dip it in thy porcelain vase;A little while each russet gemWill swell and rise with wonted grace;But when it seeks enlarged supplies,The orphan of the forest dies.Whoso walks in solitudeAnd inhabiteth the wood,Choosing light, wave, rock and bird,Before the money-loving herd,Into that forester shall pass,From these companions, power and grace.Clean shall he be, without, within,From the old adhering sin,All ill dissolving in the lightOf his triumphant piercing sight:Not vain, sour, nor frivolous;Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous;Grave, chaste, contented, though retired,And of all other men desired.On him the light of star and moonShall fall with purer radiance down;All constellations of the skyShed their virtue through his eye.Him Nature giveth for defenceHis formidable innocence;The mountain sap, the shells, the sea,All spheres, all stones, his helpers be;He shall meet the speeding year,Without wailing, without fear;He shall be happy in his love,Like to like shall joyful prove;He shall be happy whilst he wooes,Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.But if with gold she bind her hair,And deck her breast with diamond,Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,Though thou lie alone on the ground.
¶'Heed the old oracles,Ponder my spells;[1256]Song wakes in my pinnaclesWhen the wind swells.Soundeth the prophetic wind,The shadows shake on the rock behind,And the countless leaves of the pine are stringsTuned to the lay the wood-god sings.Hearken! Hearken!If thou wouldst know the mystic songChanted when the sphere was young.Aloft, abroad, the pxan swells;O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?'Tis the chronicle of art.To the open ear it singsSweet the genesis of things,Of tendency through endless ages,Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,Of rounded worlds, of space and time,Of the old flood's subsiding slime,Of chemic matter, force and form,Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:The rushing metamorphosisDissolving all that fixture is,Melts things that be to things that seem,And solid nature to a dream.O, listen to the undersong,The ever old, the ever young;And, far within those cadent pauses,The chorus of the ancient Causes!Delights the dreadful DestinyTo fling his voice into the tree,And shock thy weak ear with a noteBreathed from the everlasting throat.In music he repeats the pangWhence the fair flock of Nature sprang.O mortal! thy ears are stones;These echoes are laden with tonesWhich only the pure can hear;Thou canst not catch what they reciteOf Fate and Will, of Want and Right,[1257]Of man to come, of human life,Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'
¶Once again the pine-tree sung:—'Speak not thy speech my boughs among:Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;My hours are peaceful centuries.Talk no more with feeble tongue;No more the fool of space and time,Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.Only thy AmericansCan read thy line, can meet thy glance,But the runes that I rehearseUnderstands the universe;The least breath my boughs which tossedBrings again the Pentecost;To every soul resounding clearIn a voice of solemn cheer,—"Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"And they reply, "Forever mine!"My branches speak Italian,English, German, Basque, Castilian,Mountain speech to Highlanders,Ocean tongues to islanders,To Fin and Lap and swart Malay,To each his bosom-secret say.
¶'Come learn with me the fatal songWhich knits the world in music strong,Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,Of things with things, of times with times,Primal chimes of sun and shade,Of sound and echo, man and maid,The land reflected in the flood,Body with shadow still pursued.For Nature beats in perfect tune,And rounds with rhyme her every rune,Whether she work in land or sea,Or hide underground her alchemy.Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,[1258]Or dip thy paddle in the lake,But it carves the bow of beauty there,And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.The wood is wiser far than thou;The wood and wave each other knowNot unrelated, unaiSed,But to each thought and thing allied,Is perfect Nature's every part,Rooted in the mighty Heart.But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,Whence earnest thou, misplaced, mistimed,Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded ?Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ?Who thee divorced, deceived and left?Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,And torn the ensigns from thy brow,And sunk the immortal eye so low ?Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,Thy gait too slow, thy habits tenderFor royal man;—they thee confessAn exile from the wilderness,—The hills where health with health agrees,And the wise soul expels disease.Hark! in thy ear I will tell the signBy which thy hurt thou may'st divine.When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,To thee the horizon shall expressBut emptiness on emptiness;There lives no man of Nature's worthIn the circle of the earth;And to thine eye the vast skies fall,Dire and satirical,On clucking hens and prating fools,On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.And thou shalt say to the Most High,"Godhead! all this astronomy,And fate and practice and invention,Strong art and beautiful pretension,This radiant pomp of sun and star,[1259]Throes that were, and worlds that are,Behold! were in vain and in vain;—It cannot be,—I will look again.Surely now will the curtain rise,And earth's fit tenant me surprise;—But the curtain doth not rise,And Nature has miscarried whollyInto failure, into folly."
¶'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy,Blessed Nature so to see.Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,And heal the hurts which sin has made.I see thee in the crowd alone;I will be thy companion.Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,And build to them a final tomb;Let the starred shade that nightly fallsStill celebrate their funerals,And the bell of beetle and of beeKnell their melodious memory.Behind thee leave thy merchandise,Thy churches and thy charities;And leave thy peacock wit behind;Enough for thee the primal mindThat flows in streams, that breathes in windLeave all thy pedant lore apart;God hid the whole world in thy heart.Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,Gives all to them who all renounce.The rain comes when the wind calls;The river knows the way to the sea;Without a pilot it runs and falls,Blessing all lands with its charity;The sea tosses and foams to findIts way up to the cloud and wind;The shadow sits close to the flying ball;The date fails not on the palm-tree tall;And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages,—Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.[1260]Oft didst thou thread the woods in vainTo find what bird had piped the strain:—Seek not, and the little eremiteFlies gayly forth and sings in sight.
¶'Hearken once more!I will tell thee the mundane lore.Older am I than thy numbers wot,Change I may, but I pass not.Hitherto all things fast abide,And anchored in the tempest ride.Trenchant time behoves to hurryAll to yean and all to bury:All the forms are fugitive,But the substances survive.Ever fresh the broad creation,A divine improvisation,From the heart of God proceeds,A single will, a million deeds.Once slept the world an egg of stone,And pulse, and sound, and light was none;And God said, "Throb!" and there was motionAnd the vast mass became vast ocean.Onward and on, the eternal Pan,Who layeth the world's incessant plan,Halteth never in one shape,But forever doth escape,Like wave or flame, into new formsOf gem, and air, of plants, and worms.I, that to-day am a pine,Yesterday was a bundle of grass.He is free and libertine,Pouring of his power the wineTo every age, to every race;Unto every race and ageHe emptieth the beverage;Unto each, and unto all,Maker and original.The world is the ring of his spells,And the play of his miracles.[1261]As he giveth to all to drink,Thus or thus they are and think.With one drop sheds form and feature;With the next a special nature;The third adds heat's indulgent spark;The fourth gives light which eats the dark;Into the fifth himself he flings,And conscious Law is King of kings.As the bee through the garden ranges,From world to world the godhead changes;As the sheep go feeding in the waste,From form to form He maketh haste:This vault which glows immense with lightIs the inn where he lodges for a night.What recks such Traveller if the bowersWhich bloom and fade like meadow flowersA bunch of fragrant lilies be,Or the stars of eternity?Alike to him the better, the worse,—The glowing angel, the outcast corse.Thou metest him by centuries,And lo! he passes like the breeze;Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,He hides in pure transparency;Thou askest in fountains and in fires,He is the essence that inquires.He is the axis of the star;He is the sparkle of the spar;He is the heart of every creature;He is the meaning of each feature;And his mind is the sky,Than all it holds more deep, more high.'
772 Boston HymnRead in Music Hall, January I, 1863 1
¶THE word of the Lord by nightTo the watching Pilgrims came,As they sat by the seaside,And filled their hearts with flame.1 The day when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.[1262]God said, I am tired of kings,I suffer them no more;Up to my ear the morning bringsThe outrage of the poor.
¶Think ye I made this ballA field of havoc and war,Where tyrants great and tyrants smallMight harry the weak and poor?
¶My angel,—his name is Freedom,—Choose him to be your king;He shall cut pathways east and westAnd fend you with his wing.
¶Lo! I uncover the landWhich I hid of old time in the West,As the sculptor uncovers the statueWhen he has wrought his best;
¶I show Columbia, of the rocksWhich dip their foot in the seasAnd soar to the air-borne flocksOf clouds and the boreal fleece.
¶I will divide my goods;Call in the wretch and slave:None shall rule but the humble,And none but Toil shall have.
¶I will have never a noble,No lineage counted great;Fishers and choppers and ploughmenShall constitute a state.
¶Go, cut down trees in the forestAnd trim the straightest boughs;Cut down trees in the forestAnd build me a wooden house.[1263]Call the people together,The young men and the sires,The digger in the harvest-field,Hireling and him that hires;
¶And here in a pine state-houseThey shall choose men to ruleIn every needful faculty,In church and state and school.
¶Lo, now! if these poor menCan govern the land and seaAnd make just laws below the sun,As planets faithful be.
¶And ye shall succor men;'Tis nobleness to serve;Help them who cannot help again:Beware from right to swerve.
¶I break your bonds and masterships,And I unchain the slave:Free be his heart and hand henceforthAs wind and wandering wave.
¶I cause from every creatureHis proper good to flow:As much as he is and doeth,So much he shall bestow.
¶But, lay hands on anotherTo coin his labor and sweat,He goes in pawn for his victimFor eternal years in debt.
¶To-day unbind the captive,So only are ye unbound;Lift up a people from the dust,Trump of their rescue, sound![1264]Pay ransom to the ownerAnd fill the bag to the brim.Who is the owner? The slave is owner,And ever was. Pay him.
¶O North! give him beauty for rags,And honor, O South! for his shame;Nevada! coin thy golden cragsWith Freedom's image and name.
¶Up! and the dusky raceThat sat in darkness long,—Be swift their feet as antelopes,And as behemoth strong.
¶Come, East and West and North,By races, as snow flakes,And carry my purpose forth,Which neither halts nor shakes.
¶My will fulfilled shall be,For, in daylight or in dark,My thunderbolt has eyes to seeHis way home to the mark.