BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1904

825
Em 34

s

COPYRIGHT, 1870, BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1898 AND 1904, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE

SEYD melted the days like cups of pearl,
Served high and low, the lord and churl,
Loved harebells nodding on a rock,

A cabin hung with curling smoke,
Ring of axe or hum of wheel

Or gleam which use can paint on steel,
And huts and tents; nor loved he less
Stately lords in palaces,

Princely women hard to please,

Fenced by form and ceremony,

Decked by courtly rites and dress

And etiquette of gentilesse.

But when the mate of the snow and wind,

He left each civil scale behind:

Him wood-gods fed with honey wild

And of his memory beguiled.

In caves and hollow trees he crept
And near the wolf and panther slept.
He stood before the tumbling main
With joy too tense for sober brain;
He shared the life of the element,
The tie of blood and home was rent:

As if in him the welkin walked,

The winds took flesh, the mountains talked, And he the bard, a crystal soul,

Sphered and concentric with the whole.