Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/421

Rh By mind's industry sharpening the love of life—

Books, Muses, Study, fireside, friends and love,

I loved ye with true love, so fare ye well!

I was a boy; boyhood slid gayly by

And the impatient years that trod on it

Taught me new lessons in the lore of life.

I 've learned the sum of that sad history

All woman-born do know, that hoped-for days,

Days that come dancing on fraught with delights,

Dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by.

But I, the bantling of a country Muse,

Abandon all those toys with speed to obey

The King whose meek ambassador I go.

1826.

THE RIVER

I behold once more

My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,

The same blue wonder that my infant eye

Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,—

Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed

The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields,

And where thereafter in the world he went.

Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now

He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales