Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/124

112 So call not waste that barren cone

Above the floral zone,

Where forests starve:

It is pure use;—

What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind

Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,

Thou grand expresser of the present tense,

And type of permanence!

Firm ensign of the fatal Being,

Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief,

That will not bide the seeing!

Hither we bring

Our insect miseries to the rocks;

And the whole flight, with pestering wing,

Vanish, and end their murmuring,—

Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,

Which who can tell what mason laid?

Spoils of a front none need restore,