Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/227

Rh Life and silver spend thou freely

If thou honorest the soul.

Haste into the other life;

All is vain save God alone.

Give me, boy, this toy of Dæmons:

When the cup of Jam was lost,

Him availed the world no more.

Fetch the wineglass made of ice;

Wake the torpid heart with wine.

Every clod of loam beneath us

Is a skull of Alexander;

Oceans are the blood of princes;

Desert sands the dust of beauties.

More than one Darius was there

Who the whole world overcame;

But, since these gave up the ghost,

Thinkest thou they never were?

Boy, go from me to the shah;

Say to him, 'Shah, crowned as Jam,

Win thou first the poor man's heart,

Then the glass; so know the world.