Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/345

 THE POET

I

upward on the road of fame

With sounding steps the poet came;

Born and nourished in miracles,

His feet were shod with golden bells,

Or where he stepped the soil did peal

As if the dust were glass and steel.

The gallant child where'er he came

Threw to each fact a tuneful name.

The things whereon he cast his eyes

Could not the nations rebaptize,

Nor Time's snows hide the names he set,

Nor last posterity forget.

Yet every scroll whereon he wrote

In latent fire his secret thought,

Fell unregarded to the ground,

Unseen by such as stood around.

The pious wind took it away,

The reverent darkness hid the lay.

Methought like water-haunting birds

Divers or dippers were his words,

And idle clowns beside the mere

At the new vision gape and jeer.