Ralph Waldo Emerson : Philosopher and Seer an estimate of his character and genius In Prose and Verse |
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 | Ralph Waldo Emerson : Philosopher and Seer |  |
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ION: A MONODY.
By A. BRONSON ALCOTT.
I.
Why, oh, ye willows, and ye pastures bare,Why will ye thus your bloom so late delay,
Wrap in chill weeds the sere and sullen day,
And cheerless greet me wandering in despair?
Tell me, ah, tell me!—ye of old could tell,—
Whither my vanished Ion now doth fare.
Say, have ye seen him lately pass this way,
Ye who his wonted haunts did know full well?
Heard ye his voice forth from the thicket swell,
Where midst the drooping ferns he loved to stray?
Caught ye no glimpses of my truant there?
Tell me, oh, tell me, whither he hath flown—
Beloved Ion flown, and left ye sad and lone,
Whilst I through wood and field his loss bemoan.
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II.
Early through field and wood each Spring we sped,Young Ion leading o'er the reedy pass;
How fleet his footsteps and how sure his tread!
His converse deep and weighty;—where, alas!
Like force of thought with subtlest beauty wed?
The bee and bird and flower, the pile of grass,
The lore of stars, the azure sky o'erhead,
The eye's warm glance, the Fates of love and dread,—
All mirrored were in his prismatic glass;
For endless Being's myriad-minded race
Had in his thought their registry and place,—
Bright with intelligence, or drugged with sleep,
Hid in dark cave, aloft on mountain steep,
In seas immersed, ensouled in starry keep.
III.
Now Echo answers lone from cliff and brake,Where we in springtime sauntering loved to go,—
Or at the mossy bank beyond the lake,
On its green plushes oft ourselves did throw:
There from the sparkling wave our thirst to slake,
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Our hands for cups, and did with glee partake.
Next to the Hermit's cell our way we make,
Where sprightly talk doth hold the morning late;
Deserted now: ah, Hylas, too, is gone!
Hylas, dear Ion's friend and mine,—I all alone,
Alone am left by unrelenting fate,—
Vanished my loved ones all,—the good, the great,—
Why am I spared? why left disconsolate?
IV.
Slow winds our Indian stream through meadows green,By bending willows, tangled fen and brake,
Smooth field and farmstead doth its flow forsake;
'Twas in far woodpaths Ion, too, was seen,
But oftenest found at Walden's emerald lake,
(The murmuring pines inverted in its sheen;)
There in his skiff he rippling rhymes did make,
Its answering shores echoing the verse between:
Full-voiced the meaning of the wizard song,
Far wood and wave and shore, with kindred will,
Strophe, antistrophe, in turn prolong:—
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Ion, melodious bard, hath dropt his quill,
His harp is silent, and his voice is still.
V.
Blameless was Ion, beautiful to see,With native genius, with rich gifts endowed;
He might of his descent be nobly proud,
Yet meekly tempered was, spake modestly,
Nor sought the plaudits of the noisy crowd,
When Duty called him in the thick to be.
His life flowed calmly clear, not hoarse nor loud;
He wearied not of immortality,
Nor like Tithonus begged a time-spun shroud;
But life-long drank at fountains of pure truth,
The seer unsated of eternal youth.
'T is not for Ion's sake these tears I shed,
'T is for the Age he nursed, his genius fed,—
Ion immortal is,—he is not dead.
VI.
Did e'en the Ionian bard, Mæonides,Blind minstrel wandering out of Asia's night,
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In strains forever tuneful to recite,
His raptured listeners the more delight?
Or dropt learned Plato 'neath his olive trees,
More star-bright wisdom in the world's full sight,
Well garnered in familiar colloquies,
Than did our harvester in fields of light?
Nor spoke more charmingly young Charmides,
Than our glad rhapsodist in his far flight
Across the continents, both new and old;
His tale to studious thousands thus he told
In summer's solstice and midwinter's cold.
VII.
Shall from the shades another Orpheus riseSweeping with venturous hand the vocal string,
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise,
And wake to ecstacy each slumberous thing;
Flash life and thought anew in wondering eyes,
As when our seer transcendent, sweet, and wise,
World-wide his native melodies did sing,
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories?
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None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill
To touch that instrument with art and will;
With him winged Poesy doth droop and die,
While our dull age, left voiceless, with sad eye
Follows his flight to groves of song on high.
VIII.
Come, then, Mnemosyne! and on me wait,As if for Ion's harp thou gav'st thine own;
Recall the memories of man's ancient state,
Ere to this low orb had his form dropt down,
Clothed in the cerements of his chosen fate;
Oblivious here of heavenly glories flown,
Lapsed from the high, the fair, the blest estate,
Unknowing these, and by himself unknown:
Lo! Ion, unfallen from his lordly prime,
Paused in his passing flight, and, giving ear
To heedless sojourners in weary time,
Sang his full song of hope and lofty cheer;
Aroused them from dull sleep, from grisly fear,
And toward the stars their faces did uprear.
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IX.
Why didst thou haste away, ere yet the greenEnameled meadow, the sequestered dell,
The blossoming orchard, leafy grove were seen
In the sweet season thou hadst sung so well?
Why cast this shadow o'er the vernal scene?
No more its rustic charms of thee may tell
And so content us with their simple mien.
Was it that memory's unrelinquished spell
(Ere man had stumbled here amid the tombs,)
Revived for thee that Spring's perennial blooms,
Those cloud-capped alcoves where we once did dwell?
Translated wast thou in some rapturous dream?
Our once familiar faces strange must seem,
Whilst from thine own celestial smiles did stream!
X.
I tread the marble leading to his door,(Allowed the freedom of a chosen friend;)
He greets me not as was his wont before,
The Fates within frown on me as of yore,—
Could ye not once your offices suspend?
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Or Clotho stooped the sundered thread to mend!
Yet why dear Ion's destiny deplore?
What more had envious Time himself to give?
His fame had reached the ocean's farthest shore,—
Why prisoned here should Ion longer live?
The questioning Sphinx declared him void of blame;
For wiser answer none could ever frame;
Beyond all time survives his mighty name.
XI.
Now pillowed near loved Hylas' lowly bed,Beneath our aged oaks and sighing pines,
Pale Ion rests awhile his laureled head;
(How sweet his slumber as he there reclines!)
Why weep for Ion here? He is not dead,
Nought of him Personal that mound confines;
The hues ethereal of the morning red
This clod embraces never, nor enshrines.
Away the mourning multitude hath sped,
And round us closes fast the gathering night,
As from the drowsy dell the sun declines,
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But on the morrow, with the budding May,
A-field goes Ion, at first flush of day,
Across the pastures on his dewy way.
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THE POET'S COUNTERSIGN.
“I grant, sweet soul, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again;
He lends thee virtue,—and he stole that word
From thy behavior; beauty doth he give,
And found it on thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.”
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again;
He lends thee virtue,—and he stole that word
From thy behavior; beauty doth he give,
And found it on thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.”
I.
Across these meadows, o'er the hills,Beside our sleeping waters, hurrying rills,
Through many a woodland dark, and many a bright arcade,
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An Indian mat of checquered light and shade,—
The sister seasons in their maze,
Since last we wakened here
From hot siesta the still drowsy year,
Have led the fourfold dance along our quiet ways,—
Autumn apparelled sadly gay,
Winter's white furs and shortened day,
Spring's loitering footstep, quickened at the last,
And half the affluent summer went and came,
As for uncounted years the same—
Ah me! another unreturning spring hath passed.
II.
“When the young die,” the Grecian mourner said,“The springtime from the year hath vanished;”
The gray-haired poet, in unfailing youth,
Sits by the shrine of Truth,
Her oracles to spell,
And their deep meaning tell;
Or else he chants a bird-like note
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Which warbled forth the songs of smooth-cheeked May
Beside Youth's sunny fountain all the day;
Sweetly the echoes ring
As in the flush of spring;
At last the poet dies,
The sunny fountain dries,—
The oracles are dumb, no more the wood-birds sing.
III.
Homer forsakes the billowy roundOf sailors circling o'er the island-sea;
Pindar, from Theban fountains and the mound
Builded in love and woe by doomed Antigone,
Must pass beneath the ground;
Stout Æschylus that slew the deep-haired Mede
At Marathon, at Salamis, and freed
Athens from Persian thrall,
Then sung the battle call,—
Must yield to that one foe he could not quell;
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Sicilian roses bloom
Above his nameless tomb;
And there the nightingale doth mourn in vain
For Bion, too, who sung the Dorian strain;
By Arethusa's tide,
His brother swains might flute in Dorian mood,—
The bird of love in thickets of the wood
Sing for a thousand years his grave beside—
Yet Bion still was mute—the Dorian lay had died.
IV.
The Attic poet at approach of ageLaid by his garland, took the staff and scrip,
For singing robes the mantle of the sage,—
And taught gray wisdom with the same grave lip
That once had carolled gay
Where silver flutes breathed soft and festal harps did play;
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While he that from Stagira came to hear
In lyric measures bade his princely pupil arm,
And strike the Persian tyrant mute with fear.
High thought doth well accord with melody,
Brave deed with Poesy,
And song is prelude fair to sweet Philosophy.
But wiser English Shakspeare's noble choice,
Poet and sage at once, whose varied voice
Taught beyond Plato's ken, yet charming every ear;—
A kindred choice was his, whose spirit hovers here.
V.
Now Avon glides through Severn to the sea,And murmurs that her Shakspeare sings no more;
Thames bears the freight of many a tribute shore,
But on those banks her poet bold and free,
That stooped in blindness at his humble door,
Yet never bowed to priest or prince the knee,
Wanders no more by those sad sisters led;
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Have left their names alone to him whose scheme
Stiffly endeavors to supplant the dream
Of seer and poet, with mechanic rule
Learned from the chemist's closet, from the surgeon's tool.
With us Philosophy still spreads her wing,
And soars to seek Heaven's King—
Nor creeps through charnels, prying with the glass
That makes the little big,—while gods unseen may pass.
VI.
Along the marge of these slow-gliding streams,Our winding Concord and the wider flow
Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams
A throng of poets,—tearfully they go;
For each bright river misses from its band
The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand,—
They sleep each on his wooded hill above the sorrowing land.
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Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn,—
Sadly above them wave
The wailing pine-trees of their native strand;
Sadly the distant billows smite the shore,
Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar;
All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair,
On earth, in sea or air,
Droop and grow silent by the poet's grave.
VII.
Yet wherefore weep? Old age is but a tomb,A living hearse, slow creeping to the gloom
And utter silence. He from age is freed
Who meets the stroke of Death and rises thence
Victor o'er every woe; his sure defence
Is swift defeat; by that he doth succeed.
Death is the poet's friend—I speak it sooth;
Death shall restore him to his golden youth,
Unlock for him the portal of renown,
And on Fame's tablet write his verses down,
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With us Death's quarrel is: he takes away
Joy from our eyes—from this dark world the day—
When other skies he opens to the poet's ray.
VIII.
Lonely these meadows green,Silent these warbling woodlands must appear
To us, by whom our poet-sage was seen
Wandering among their beauties, year by year,—
Listening with delicate ear
To each fine note that fell from tree or sky,
Or rose from earth on high:
Glancing that falcon eye,
In kindly radiance as of some young star,
At all the shows of Nature near and far,
Or on the tame procession plodding by,
Of daily toil and care,—and all life's pageantry;
Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love,
Wide as the sun's great orbit, and as high above
These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply.
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IX.
His was the task and his the lordly giftOur eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift;
He found us chained in Plato's fabled cave,
Our faces long averted from the blaze
Of Heaven's broad light, and idly turned to gaze
On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave
That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted;
By shadows haunted
We sat,—amused in youth, in manhood daunted,
In vacant age forlorn,—then slipped within the grave,
The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud;
These captives, bound and bowed,
He from their dungeon like that angel led
Who softly to imprisoned Peter said,
“Arise up quickly! gird thyself and flee!”
We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our souls were free.
X.
Ah! blest those years of youthful hope,When every breeze was Zephyr, every morning May!
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Of life's steep mount, we gained a wider scope
At every stair, and could with joy survey
The track beneath us, and the upward way;
Both lay in light—round both the breath of love
Fragrant and warm from Heaven's own tropic blew;
Beside us what glad comrades smiled and strove!
Beyond us what dim visions rose to view!
With thee, dear Master! through that morning land
We journeyed happy: thine the guiding hand,
Thine the far-looking eye, the dauntless smile;
Thy lofty song of hope did the long march beguile.
XI.
Now scattered wide and lost to loving sightThe gallant train
That heard thy strain;
'T is May no longer,—shadows of the night
Beset the downward pathway; thou art gone,
And with thee vanished that perpetual dawn
Of which thou wert the harbinger and seer.
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Each other's voices, lost within this cloud
That time and chance about our way have cast,
Still his brave music haunts the hearkening ear,
As 'mid bold cliffs and dewy passes of the Past.
Be that our countersign! for chanting loud
His magic song, though far apart we go,
Best shall we thus discern both friend and foe.
| Ralph Waldo Emerson : Philosopher and Seer | |