Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/106

70 On the flinty pathway beat

Of him that cometh, and shall come;

Of him who shall as lightly bear

My daily load of woods and streams,

As doth this round sky-cleaving boat

Which never strains its rocky beams;

Whose timbers, as they silent float,

Alps and Caucasus uprear,

And the long Alleghanies here,

And all town-sprinkled lands that be,

Sailing through stars with all their history.

Every morn I lift my head,

See New England underspread,

South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,

From Katskill east to the sea-bound.

Anchored fast for many an age,

I await the bard and sage,

Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,

Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.

Comes that cheerful troubadour,

This mound shall throb his face before,

As when, with inward fires and pain,

It rose a bubble from the plain.

When he cometh, I shall shed,

From this wellspring in my head,

Fountain-drop of spicier worth

Than all vintage of the earth.

There 's fruit upon my barren soil