Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/244

208 IV

for the fortunate soul

Which Music's wings infold,

Stealing away the memory

Of sorrows new and old!

Yet happier he whose inward sight,

Stayed on his subtile thought,

Shuts his sense on toys of time,

To vacant bosoms brought.

But best befriended of the God

He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,

Biding by his rule and choice,

Feeling only the fiery thread

Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,

To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.

Peril around, all else appalling,

Cannon in front and leaden rain

Him duty through the clarion calling

To the van called not in vain.

Stainless soldier on the walls,

Knowing this,—and knows no more,—

Whoever fights, whoever falls,

Justice conquers evermore,