Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/150

 cattle graze on the hills in herds as great now as then, and as broad cornfields toss their golden plumes toward the sky. The houses where dwelt Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, still stand, and into the fields round about them few others have crowded. The fertile soil still yields crops to the husbandman, in whose breast slumbers mayhap the same sturdy courage which made the Minute Men and would make others should the need arise. Manufacturing, summer hotel keeping, these things do not seem to have touched the town much. I fancy it as lying fallow, waiting the flow of that ichor of the immortals that shall some day again waken it to great things.

"The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled; Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world, Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept? I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept.

"The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Dædalian plan;