Page:May-day and other pieces, Emerson, 1867.djvu/45

Rh Which thus the buried Past can tell,

Should rive the Future, and reveal

What his dread folds would fain conceal?

It shares the secret of the earth,

And of the kinds that owe her birth.

Speaks not of self that mystic tone,

But of the Overgods alone:

It trembles to the cosmic breath,—

As it heareth, so it saith;

Obeying meek the primal Cause,

It is the tongue of mundane laws.

And this, at least, I dare affirm,

Since genius too has bound and term,

There is no bard in all the choir,

Not Homer's self, the poet sire,

Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,

Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,

Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,

Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,