Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, POEM, SPOKEN BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, AUGUST, 1934, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POEM, SPOKEN BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, AUGUST, 1934, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Is not this house a harp whose living chords
Last Line: Shall greet with joy sublime the angel death.
Subject(s): United States; America


Is not this house a harp whose living chords,
Touched by a Poet with electric words,
Would vibrate with a harmony more true
Than Handel's married thunders ever knew?
But I, -- mere lover of the Bards' sweet speech,
A simple seeker of the truth they teach,
Having no skill to play, must touch a string
That even to fumbling hands may music bring.
For who can love AMERICA, but seems
Clothed with some favor from its woods and streams?

His hand who hung in space this sun-burnt ball
Made Man the Heart in harmony with all
And each man to his native country tied
With the twin ligaments of love & pride.
And shall it be by antique men alone
In petty states can patriot zeal be shown
They vaunt their pastures at a kingdom's worth
And we be dumb, whose lands balance the earth.

What purpose to man friendly hid so long
Columbia from the subtle & the strong,
Almost from pole to pole its green extent
Yet measured -- only by the firmament.
Along the enormous tract in every belt
Of latitude, a several climate felt:
Under the arctic morn, red snow and moss,
Flora's cold elements, the rocks emboss.
Southward, the rose, the apple, and the corn,
Thank the sweet influence of night and morn;
The palm-tree shakes its feathers on the Line,
And round the cane and plantain, curls the vine.

Thou shalt not covet; leave those lands alone,
Content to speculate within thine own.
As the stars shine in heaven, so genial shine
Thy stars, my country, to all lands a sign!
The little traveller from Britain's isle
Lost in these far-spread states, may chirp and smile
At unbred men; because his dinner cools,
The country's naught, -- the countrymen are fools.
For him an ill-served soup hath disenchanted
The mighty hemisphere his fathers planted;
He sees not, by the famous pilgrims won,
A hundred Englands opening to the sun.

These northern fields, once the bear's range and den
Bread, iron, oak, and coal, they yield to men.
Richer than purple hills of oil & wine,
Our barren mountains give their son, the Pine;
Borne on whose planks, the hardy fishers float
Round earth, wherever waves will bear a boat.

Angels might lean to see man going forth
With axe & plough to tame the savage earth;
The builder's saw and hammer never rest;
A village climbs each hill with whitening crest;
Lowell, Bangor, & Rochester express
To pleased God the redeemed wilderness:
See the green line of culture westward run
Oer hill, swamp, prairie, to the setting sun:
Yon wagon, disappearing in the woods,
Transplants the Saxon germ to lovelier solitudes,
Bearing the wife, the babes, -- basket & store --
To greet with English tongue Pacific's shore.
What's Italy? What's England; Flanders France
That may compare with this inheritance
Prisons of cooped up millions born too late
Whose loss were gain to the oerburdened state
Here shall a man be rated at his worth
And nature's freshest roses hail his birth.

Best name that Time can in his annals find
Columbia styled the Asylum of mankind
Blest office! to the exile to dispense
With open hand a God's munificence
Say to him there is room for us and him
In the deep woods & by the Ocean's brim;
Yes greet sad Europe's exile to your shores
Let love unbar to him the mountain doors
Bid homeless Poland prove this side the main
The freedom she hath perilled all to gain
Give Erin's starving outcast, wholesome meat;
And England's haggard weaver slumber sweet.

Ah thou poor orphan! did the pitiless bed
Of feudal earth that bare thee grudge thee bread?
Was man so cheap in yon preserves of game
That thou must bend thy body as in shame
At being man; in Want, did life begin;
Thy only happiness the joys of sin;
Was it thine added crime some shame to feel,
To be for life the treadle of a wheel?
Come, clear thy brow; the hospitable Hours
Shall weave thy future web with healing flowers.
Welcome! in this continent thou shalt see
God's blessing broad enough to cover thee.
Come, teach thy lip to smile; that hopeless brow
Ill fits the firmament that shades thee now.
Go climb the Allegany's strait defiles;
Speed up Missouri twice a thousand miles,
Traverse the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The allseeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Build where thou wilt thy home in Freedoms soil,
And bare thy strong arms to a freeman's toil;
Plenty shall fill for thee her laughing horn,
And fields be jocund when thy son is born;
Go rear, -- for truth the British gibe prevents, --
A race of captains, judges, presidents.

Small praise I deem it that this continent
Provides the beggar bread, clothing, content;
But greater praise no lands have claimed or can
Than this, -- we make the vagabond a man.
Him for whom Thought & Freedom were but words
Whose substance was monopolized by lords
Open in him that inward eye whose view
Doth re-create the Universe anew
Is the rose fair? behold it glows for him;
For him the sea shells blush; the dolphins swim;
The perfumed morning sheds her diamond dews;
All sights and sounds in him their spirit infuse;
The keen October's air, when trees are gay
With rainbow plumage, deepening day by day;
The midnights pomp when yonder horned moon
Rivals days golden with a silver moon;
But more than all, he was for Virtue born,
Though thrown neglected on his country's scorn
And every gift benignant heaven let fall
On Man, the exile here is heir of all.

Yes, ope the hospitable forest wide
Unto poor men from all the realms of pride
So shall the New World pay the old its debt
For the great pair, -- Columbus, -- Lafayette;
From yon serene heaven leaning they shall see
The land which one would find, and one would free.

Alas for France! her truest heart is fled:
Her long-descended noble lieth dead
-- The best of heroes in the worst of times
His spotless life relieves his country's crimes
Permit the vagrant muse to grace her verse
Borrowing a garland from his recent hearse

Ten years are flown since this great heir of fame
Stood here among us -- to his children came
In his clear atmosphere of honor stood
And warmed us with the glory of the good
You know Who knows it not in any clime
The jubilee & triumph of that time
The nation followed him with eyes of love
As if he were some Genius from above
Uprose the farmer by his apple-tree
Tarried the sailor ere he put to sea.
The story of his life through all mouths ran
And swelling crowds hemmed in the heroic man
They pored insatiate on his seamed face
As if to search therein the spirit's grace
In calm simplicity the old man stood
As one on sights of joy unused to brood
Seemed his great heart more easily would brave
A martyr for man's liberty -- the grave
He wore no badge -- no mark the eye could see
Adorned only with his history.

So seemed to us; but envious Carlists prate
He was a good man but was never great;
His simple figure in the rich saloons
And halting foot displeased the court buffoons
He had a fixed smile, a farmers face,
Nor looked like marquis of the ancient race.
Ah! could these worshippers of ribbons read
In mortal features an immortal meed!
That smile has braved Bourbon's & Orleans' frown,
That farmer's face outfaced Napoleon.
That patient worshipper of right was known
Where gayer lineaments might not be shown
In war's red lines, & in the popular shock
When foaming thousands bellowed, 'To the block!'
A tower immovable in Factions sea,
The patriarch, 'mid the nations, of the free.
Smile did he? twas for Freedoms livelong hope
When all but he quailed at her horoscope;
Write on his tomb -- 'He never failed to smile
Gainst death, for freedom & for man the while.'
But when a man to noble place pretends
Take the old touchstone Judge him by his friends
There were two men in this our latter age
Might challenge greatness on a Roman page
One had a patriot's, one a monarch's heart, --
Both soldiers -- Washington and Bonaparte.
On Lafayette in arms leaned Washington,
-- When saw the world such pair? -- father and son.
Napoleon, when all Europe knelt around him,
Sought Lafayette, -- fain with his love had bound him,
And he whom Europe served, proud of its chain,
Sued to the great republican in vain.

Rich is the living map the eagle sees
Sailing oer Auburn in the harvest breeze;
Bright streams, white towns, & man sustaining farms,
And Boston folded in the Ocean's arms;
-- O'er town & suburb broods her public dome,
And speaks to countless eyes of Law & Home. --
And farther than that wind-borne eagle flies
Beyond the Southern Horn, or northern ice,
The errands of the pleasant land are done,
As shod with winds oer seas her envoys run.
Fair heritage! only by Virtue strong,
Be thou the tower of right, abolisher of wrong.
What charms the man that views from hill or tower
These gathered symbols of a people's power.
Is it that round him six score thousand men
Feed fat each day to sleep out night again.
If there to grudge, to rob, to mob, they dwell,
The wolf, the wild cat might be there as well.
If ancient Virtue's fire is gone & spent,
Perish these piles of Art & ornament!
Burn church & schoolhouse, which our license mock,
And let the gallant vessel rot in the dock.
The world-encircling merchant sink his goods
And with his babes pick berries in the woods:
Nay let the rotten land suck in the seas,
And the whales pasture mid our college trees!

But if the children of New England feel
With their high lifted fate an even zeal
If to be native of this law-ruled earth
Shall be in the world synonimous with worth;
Who eats his bread by Massachusett' streams
Shall steadfast aim to be the thing he seems
Shall love the country that him bore & bred
Revere the memory of her worthy dead
Feel his heart beat with throbs no sneer withstands
At Concord, Bunker's height, and Plymouth sands
And, his debt owned to God & to good men,
Cannot lay down his dust in dust again
Till he, by studious thought, or deed of love,
Have sealed his kindred with the blest above;
-- Enamoured of such worthiness shall Fate
Concede the commonwealth a longer date.
And when remotest times together view
Acts of the elder England & the New
One self same genius shall shine through them all
From ancient Runnimede to Faneuil Hall.

That genius is the Saxon love of Law
And Freedom, whence our daily peace we draw.
For see how Heaven preserves us; when, of late,
Ill omened birds screamed shipwreck to the state,
Then, to redeem the law from the law's foes,
An unexpected strength at once arose;
Thundered from lips long silent, voices wise,
And patriot anger flamed in quiet eyes.

Ill fits the abstemious muse a crown to weave
For living brows; -- ill fits them to receive:
And yet, if Virtue abrogate the law,
One portrait, -- fact or fancy -- we may draw:
A form which nature cast in the heroic mould
Of them who rescued liberty of old;
He, when the rising storm of party roared,
Brought his great forehead to the council board:
There, when hot heads perplexed with fears the state,
Calm as the morn, the manly patriot sate;
Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,
As if the conscience of the country spoke.
Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood
Than he to common sense and common good
No mimic; -- from his breast his counsel drew
Believed the eloquent was aye the true;
He bridged the gulf from the alway good & wise,
To that within the vision of small eyes.
Self centred; when he launched the genuine word
It shook or captivated all who heard;
Ran from his mouth to mountains & the sea,
And burned in noble hearts proverb & prophecy.
Not old but wise, -- for justice born to strive, --
God keep New England's WEBSTER long alive!

Yet even this day of hope may be o'ercast
And future months resemble months now past
O countrymen! though every cheek may burn
With crimson shame from time this lesson learn
The towers that generations did combine
To build & grace, a rat may undermine.

I speak unto the generous & the good
Unto New England's choicest brotherhood
Trust not the guarding sea, the fertile land
Nor fleets, nor hosts, nor law's unsure command;
Build in the soul your citadel apart, --
The true New England is the patriots heart.
The day of elder states may come to us
When public faith shall be ridiculous.
When times are changed, and the old cement gone,
Nor longer laws can yield protection;
Even then, when justice is put up to sale,
Shall one resource redress the unequal scale
For, the true man, as long as earth shall stand,
Is to himself a state, a law, a land;
In his own breast shall read the righteous laws,
His own heart argue injured Virtues cause,
With cheerful brow undauntedly shall face
Or frowning kings, or roaring populace;
And, spending in man's cause his latest breath,
Shall greet with joy sublime the Angel Death.





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