Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/179

Rh Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.

They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;

They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,

And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars,

Draw from each stratum its adapted use

To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal.

They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,

They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain,

They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime,

And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow,

Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods

O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by year,

They fight the elements with elements

(That one would say, meadow and forest walked,

Transmuted in these men to rule their like),

And by the order in the field disclose

The order regnant in the yeoman's brain.

What these strong masters wrote at large in miles,

I followed in small copy in my acre;

For there 's no rood has not a star above it;

The cordial quality of pear or plum

Ascends as gladly in a single tree

As in broad orchards resonant with bees;

And every atom poises for itself,

And for the whole. The gentle deities

Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds,

The innumerable tenements of beauty,

The miracle of generative force,