Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/273

 THE HARP

One musician is sure,

His wisdom will not fail,

He has not tasted wine impure,

Nor bent to passion frail.

Age cannot cloud his memory,

Nor grief untune his voice,

Ranging down the ruled scale

From tone of joy to inward wail,

Tempering the pitch of all

In his windy cave.

He all the fables knows,

And in their causes tells,—

Knows Nature's rarest moods,

Ever on her secret broods.

The Muse of men is coy,

Oft courted will not come;

In palaces and market squares

Entreated, she is dumb;

But my minstrel knows and tells

The counsel of the gods,

Knows of Holy Book the spells,

Knows the law of Night and Day,

And the heart of girl and boy,

The tragic and the gay,