Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/361

Rh As Jelaleddin old and gray;

He seemed to bask, to dream and play

Without remoter hope or fear

Than still to entertain his ear

And pass the burning summer-time

In the palm-grove with a rhyme;

Heedless that each cunning word

Tribes and ages overheard:

Those idle catches told the laws

Holding Nature to her cause.

God only knew how Saadi dined;

Roses he ate, and drank the wind;

He freelier breathed beside the pine,

In cities he was low and mean;

The mountain waters washed him clean

And by the sea-waves he was strong;

He heard their medicinal song,

Asked no physician but the wave,

No palace but his sea-beat cave.

Saadi held the Muse in awe,

She was his mistress and his law;

A twelvemonth he could silence hold,

Nor ran to speak till she him told;

He felt the flame, the fanning wings,

Nor offered words till they were things,

Glad when the solid mountain swims

In music and uplifting hymns.