And thou shalt say to the Most High, 'Godhead! all this astronomy,

And Fate, and practice, and invention,
Strong art, and beautiful pretension,
This radiant pomp of sun and star,
Throes that were, and worlds that are,
Behold! were in vain and in vain; -
It cannot be,-I will look again.-
Surely now will the curtain rise,
And earth's fit tenant me surprise;
But the curtain doth not rise,
And Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly.'

"Alas! thine is the bankruptcy,
Blessed Nature so to see.

Come lay thee in my soothing shade, And heal the hurts which sin has made.

I see thee in the crowd alone;

I will be thy companion.

Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
And build to them a final tomb;
Let the starred shade that nightly falls
Still celebrate their funerals,

And the bell of beetle and of bee
Knell their melodious memory.
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
Thy churches, and thy charities,
And leave thy peacock wit behind;
Enough for thee the primal mind
That flows in streams, that breathes
in wind;

Leave all thy pedant lore apart;
God hid the whole world in thy heart.
Love shuns the sage, the child it

crowns,

Gives all to them who all renounce.
The rain comes when the wind calls,
The river knows the way to the sea,
Without a pilot it runs and falls,
Blessing all lands with its charity.
The sea tosses and foams to find
Its way up to the cloud and wind,
The shadow sits close to the flying
ball,

The date fails not on the palm-tree

tall,

And thou,- go burn thy wormy pages,Shalt outsee the seer, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in

vain

To find what bird had piped the
strain,-

Seek not, and the little eremite
Flies gaily forth and sings in sight.

"Hearken once more!

I will tell the mundane lore.
Older am I than thy numbers wot,
Change I may, but I pass not.

All the forms are fugitive,
But the substances survive.
Ever fresh the broad creation,
A divine improvisation,
From the heart of God proceeds,
A single will, a million deeds.

Once slept the world an egg of stone,
And pulse, and sound, and light was

none;

And God said, 'Throb!' and there

was motion,

And the vast mass became vast ocean.

Onward and on, the eternal Pan
Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
Halteth never in one shape,

But forever doth escape,

Like wave or flame, into new forms
Of gem, and air, of plants and worms.

As the bee through the garden ranges,
From world to world the godhead

changes;

As the sheep go feeding in the waste, From form to form He maketh haste. This vault which glows immense with light

Is the inn where he lodges for a

night.

What recks such Traveller if the

bowers

Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers,

A bunch of fragrant lilies be,

Or the stars of eternity?

Alike to him the better, the worse,

The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
Thou metest him by centuries,
And lo! he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;
Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;

He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky

Than all it holds more deep, more

high."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I

AMONG THE FERNS

LAY among the ferns,

Where they lifted their fronds innumerable, in the greenwood wilderness, like wings winnowing the air;

And their voices went past me continually.

And I listened, and lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard not the voices of the ferns only, but of all living creatures:

Voices of mountain and star,

Of cloud and forest and ocean,

And of the little rills tumbling amid the rocks, And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the springs arise.

As the wind at mid-day rains whitening over

the grass,

As the night-bird glimmers a moment, fleeting between the lonely watcher and the moon, So softly inaudibly they rained,

Where I sat silent.

And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret of the growth of the ferns;

I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an undescribed and unuttered life;

And, below, the ocean lay sleeping;

And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in glad companionship for ever.

And a voice came to me, saying:

In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf

and tree and bird and beast and man, there

moves a spirit other than its mortal own,

Pure, fluid, as air-intense as fire,

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits

of all other creatures, drawing them close to itself,

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality;

And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.

And whatsoever creature has this spirit, to it no harm may befall:

No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested home,

And to it every loss comes charged with an equal gain;

It gives- but to receive a thousand-fold;

It yields its life - but at the hands of love; And death is the law of its eternal growth.

And I saw that was the law of every creature -that this spirit should enter in and take possession of it,

That it might have no more fear or doubt or be at war within itself any longer.

And lo! in the greenwood all around me it moved,

Where the sunlight floated fragrant under the boughs, and the fern-fronds winnowed the

air;

In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and in the small shy things that rustled among them; In the songs of the birds and the broad shadowing leaves overhead;

In the fields sleeping below, and in the river and the high dreaming air;

Gleaming ecstatic it moved - with joy incarnate. And it seemed to me, as I looked, that it penetrated all these things, suffusing them;

And wherever it penetrated, behold! there was