Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/125

Rh Replacing frieze and architrave;—

Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave;

Still is the haughty pile erect

Of the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind,

Having us at vantage still,

Our sumptuous indigence,

O barren mound, thy plenties fill!

We fool and prate;

Thou art silent and sedate.

To myriad kinds and times one sense

The constant mountain doth dispense;

Shedding on all its snows and leaves,

One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.

Thou seest, O watchman tall,

Our towns and races grow and fall,

And imagest the stable good

For which we all our lifetime grope,

In shifting form the formless mind,

And though the substance us elude,

We in thee the shadow find.