Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/88

52 The shadows shake on the rock behind,

And the countless leaves of the pine are strings

Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

Hearken! Hearken!

If thou wouldst know the mystic song

Chanted when the sphere was young.

Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;

O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?

O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?

'T is the chronicle of art.

To the open ear it sings

Sweet the genesis of things,

Of tendency through endless ages,

Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,

Of the old flood's subsiding slime,

Of chemic matter, force and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:

The rushing metamorphosis

Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,

And solid nature to a dream.

O, listen to the undersong,

The ever old, the ever young;

And, far within those cadent pauses,

The chorus of the ancient Causes!

Delights the dreadful Destiny

To fling his voice into the tree,

And shock thy weak ear with a note