Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/108

72 See there the grim gray rounding

Of the bullet of the earth

Whereon ye sail,

Tumbling steep

In the uncontinented deep."

He looks on that, and he turns pale.

'T is even so, this treacherous kite,

Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,

Thoughtless of its anxious freight,

Plunges eyeless on forever;

And he, poor parasite,

Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,—

Who is the captain he knows not,

Port or pilot trows not,—

Risk or ruin he must share.

I scowl on him with my cloud,

With my north wind chill his blood;

I lame him, clattering down the rocks;

And to live he is in fear.

Then, at last, I let him down

Once more into his dapper town,

To chatter, frightened, to his clan

And forget me if he can.'

As in the old poetic fame

The gods are blind and lame,

And the simular despite

Betrays the more abounding might,

So call not waste that barren cone