Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/323

 ILLUSIONS

, flow the waves hated,

Accursed, adored,

The waves of mutation;

No anchorage is.

Sleep is not, death is not;

Who seem to die live.

House you were born in,

Friends of your spring-time,

Old man and young maid,

Day's toil and its guerdon,

They are all vanishing,

Fleeing to fables,

Cannot be moored.

See the stars through them,

Through treacherous marbles.

Know the stars yonder,

The stars everlasting,

Are fugitive also,

And emulate, vaulted,

The lambent heat lightning

And fire-fly's flight.

When thou dost return

On the wave's circulation,