Page:May-day and other pieces, Emerson, 1867.djvu/137

 SEA-SHORE.

HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea

Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?

Am I not always here, thy summer home?

Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?

My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,

My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?

Was ever building like my terraces?

Was ever couch magnificent as mine?

Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn

A little hut suffices like a town.

I make your sculptured architecture vain,

Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,

And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.

Lo! here is Rome, and Nineveh, and Thebes,

Karnak, and Pyramid, and Giant's Stairs,