Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/110

74 Our sumptuous indigence,

O barren mound, thy plenties fill!

We fool and prate;

Thou art silent and sedate.

To myriad kinds and times one sense

The constant mountain doth dispense;

Shedding on all its snows and leaves,

One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.

Thou seest, O watchman tall,

Our towns and races grow and fall,

And imagest the stable good

For which we all our lifetime grope,

In shifting form the formless mind,

And though the substance us elude,

We in thee the shadow find.

Thou, in our astronomy

An opaker star,

Seen haply from afar,

Above the horizon's hoop,

A moment, by the railway troop,

As o'er some bolder height they speed,—

By circumspect ambition,

By errant gain,

By feasters and the frivolous,—

Recallest us,

And makest sane.

Mute orator! well skilled to plead,

And send conviction without phrase,

Thou dost succor and remede