Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/135

123 ASTRÆA.

it was who wrote

His rank, and quartered his own coat.

There is no king nor sovereign state

That can fix a hero's rate;

Each to all is venerable,

Cap-a-pie invulnerable,

Until he write, where all eyes rest,

Slave or master on his breast.

I saw men go up and down,

In the country and the town,

With this prayer upon their neck,—

'Judgment and a judge we seek.'

Not to monarchs they repair,

Nor to learned jurist's chair;

But they hurry to their peers,

To their kinsfolk and their dears;