Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/231

219 XENOPHANES.

fate, not option, frugal Nature gave

One scent to hyson and to wall-flower,

One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,

One aspect to the desert and the lake.

It was her stern necessity: all things

Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower,

Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character,

Deceive us, seeming to be many things,

And are but one. Beheld far off, they differ

As God and devil; bring them to the mind,

They dull its edge with their monotony.

To know one element, explore another,

And in the second reappears the first.

The specious panorama of a year

But multiplies the image of a day,—