Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/109

Rh Above the floral zone,

Where forests starve:

It is pure use;—

What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind

Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,

Thou grand affirmer of the present tense,

And type of permanence!

Firm ensign of the fatal Being,

Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief,

That will not bide the seeing!

Hither we bring

Our insect miseries to thy rocks;

And the whole flight, with folded wing,

Vanish, and end their murmuring,—

Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,

Which who can tell what mason laid?

Spoils of a front none need restore,

Replacing frieze and architrave;—

Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave;

Still is the haughty pile erect

Of the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind,

Holding us at vantage still,